THE  EARLY 

LITERARY  CAREER  OF 

ROBERT  BROWNING 

THOMAS  R.LOUNSBURY 


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STATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL 

LOS  ANGELES,  CAUFORNlA 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 
OF  ROBERT  BROWNING 


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University  of  Virginia 
Barbour-Page  Foundation 

THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 
OF  ROBERT  BROWNING 


FOUR  LECTURES 

BY 

THOMAS  R.  LOUNSBURY,L.H.D.,LL.D. 

PROFESSOR  EMERITUS  OF  ENGLISH   IN  YALE  UNIVERSITY 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

1911 


Copyright,  191  i,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Published  October,  1911 


PR 

-v^"-- 

1              V     ^ 

c "  ^-. ' 

THE   BARBOUR-PAGE  LECTURE 
FOUNDATION 

The  University  of  Virginia  is  indebted  for 
the  establishment  of  the  Barbour-Page  Foun- 
dation to  the  wisdom  and  generosity  of  Mrs. 
Thomas  Nelson  Page,  of  Washington,  D,  C. 
In  1907,  Mrs.  Page  donated  to  the  University 
the  sum  of  ;^22,ooo,  the  annual  income  of 
v^hich  is  to  be  used  in  securing  each  session 
the  delivery  before  the  University  of  a  series 
of  not  less  than  three  lectures  by  some  dis- 
tinguished man  of  letters  or  of  science.  The 
conditions  of  the  Foundation  require  that  the 
Barbour-Page  lectures  for  each  session  be  not 
less  than  three  in  number;  that  they  be  de- 
livered by  a  specialist  in  some  branch  of  liter- 
ature, science,  or  art;   that  the  lecturer  present 


in  the  series  of  lectures  some  fresh  aspect  or 
aspects  of  the  department  of  thought  in  which 
he  is  a  specialist;  and  that  the  entire  series  de- 
livered each  session,  taken  together,  shall  pos- 
sess such  unity  that  they  may  be  published  by 
the  Foundation  in  book  form. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


I.     "  Pauline  "  and  "  Paracelsus  "     .     .  i 

II.     "  Strafford  "  and  "  Sordello  "     .     .  45 

III.  "  Bells  and  Pomegranates  "...  95 

IV.  "  Bells  and  Pomegranates  "...  147 

Index 201 


I 

"PAULINE"  AND  "PARACELSUS" 

232  <^  / 
I  purpose  in  the  present  course  of  lectures  to 
give  an  account  of  the  Hterary  career  of  Robert 
Browning  from  the  publication  of  his  first  poem 
in  1833  to  his  marriage  and  departure  for  Italy 
in  1846.  The  story  of  the  works  he  produced 
during  this  period  demands,  of  course,  recital; 
but  the  principal  aim  which  I  have  had  in  view 
is  to  bring  out  distinctly  how  he  struck  his  con- 
temporaries; to  make  clear  the  causes  that  trans- 
formed the  cordial  welcome  he  received  during 
the  fourth  decade  of  the  last  century  into  the  in- 
difference and  neglect  which  waited  upon  him 
during  the  decades  immediately  following;  and, 
finally,  to  make  manifest  the  nature  of  the  agen- 
cies which  brought  about  the  remarkable  and 
peculiar  revival  of  his  reputation  during  the  clos- 
ing years  of  his  life.  Accordingly,  it  is  his  lit- 
erary career  that  comes  almost  exclusively  under 
consideration.       Only  so  far  as  it  bears  upon  the 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


comprehension  of  that  are  any  records  given  of 
his  personal  hfe.  Most  even  of  this  little  will  be 
found  comprised  in  the  opening  lecture. 

Criticism  of  the  w^ork  he  produced  during  this 
period  is  hecessarily  involved  in  any  discussion 
of  his  career.  But  there  has  been  no  intention 
to  go  into  it  largely,  far  less  exhaustively.  About 
the  value  or  correctness  of  what  of  it  is  here  given 
there  will  assuredly  be  difference  of  opinion. 
The  inferences  drawn,  the  views  expressed,  are 
likely  to  encounter  the  dissent  of  many  of  you, 
perhaps  even  of  most  of  you.  At  all  events,  I 
have  not  needed  to  come  to  this  university  to 
find  those  who  deem  them  wrong  and  some  who 
call  them  abominable.  The  justice  of  critical 
conclusions  must  be  left  to  time  to  determine, 
when  the  likes  and  dislikes  of  the  present,  its 
fancies  and  its  fashions,  have  passed  out  of  rec- 
ognition and  almost  out  of  remembrance. 

But  though  the  future  can  test  most  satis- 
factorily the  truth  of  opinion,  it  is  usually  at  a 
disadvantage  in  testing  the  truth  of  fact.  It  is 
for  the  present  to  detect  and  expose  falsity  of 
statement,  before  frequency  of  repetition  has 
hardened  the  general  mind  into  settled  beliefs 
which,  through  laziness  or  indifference,  men  re- 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING 


fuse  ever  after  to  discard  or  even  modify.  While, 
therefore,  I  ask  no  one  to  accept  the  judgments 
here  expressed,  I  think  I  may  venture  to  insist 
that  the  facts  I  shall  give  in  controverted  matters 
cannot  be  successfully  disputed.  This  is  a  point 
of  some  importance,  because  about  certain  events 
in  the  poet's  career  there  has  already  begun  to 
gather  a  mass  of  mythical  statement,  which  is 
found  duly  recorded  in  the  accounts  furnished  of 
his  life.  It  is  all  the  more  important  to  correct 
it  now,  because  certain  of  these  erroneous  as- 
sertions have  for  their  support  the  authority  of 
Browning  himself.  Some  explanation  of  this 
sort  it  seemed  desirable  to  premise  before  enter- 
ing, as  I  now  do,  upon  the  main  subject  itself. 

Robert  Browning  first  appeared  as  an  author 
in  the  early  part  of  1B33.  ^^  ^^^  born  on  May 
7,  18 12,  in  SouthampfCn  Street,  Camberwell,  a 
borough  on  the  southern  side  of  the  Thames. 
Accordingly,  at  the  time  of  his  first  venture  into 
literature  he  had  not  yet  attained  his  majority. 
As  a  general  rule,  to  which  there  are  not  many 
exceptions,  poetical  genius  develops  early.  Not 
infrequently,  too,  it  exhausts  itself  early.  Few 
are  the  great  poets  who  have  reached   a   rea- 


4  THE  EARLY   LITERARY   CAREER 

sonably  advanced  age  whose  best  work  has  not 
been  composed  mainly  in  the  first  half  of  their 
lives.  Their  later  production  shows  no  advance 
upon  the  earlier:  more  often  it  indicates  distinct 
retrogression.  This  is  not  altogether  true  of 
either  Browning  or  Tennyson;  but  even  of  them 
it  is  in  great  measure  true. 

The  boy  grew  up  in  a  home  populous  with 
books;  for  his  father,  a  clerk  in  the  Bank  of 
England,  was  in  his  way  a  good  deal  of  a  scholar. 
The  son,  with  literary  tastes  keenly  marked,  be- 
gan early  to  produce  poems.  These,  fortunately 
perhaps  for  the  peace  of  our  generation,  have 
disappeared.  They  were  largely  written  under 
the  influence  of  Byron,  who,  for  the  whole  period 
of  his  literary  activity,  was  what  he  described 
himself  as  being  for  a  while,  "the  grand  Napo- 
leon of  the  realms  of  rhyme."  To  him  all  poet- 
ical aspirants  then  yielded  homage  in  the  form 
of  imitation,  conscious  or  unconscious. 
k  The  father's  tastes  in  literature  were  in  sym- 
pathy mainly  with  the  old  poetic  school  of  the 
eighteenth  century  which  was  dying  out,  or  had 
already  died  out,  if  properly  any  school  can  ever 
be  said  to  die  out  which  has  had  any  real  reason 
for  existing  at  all.     Naturally  much  of  the  pro- 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING 


duction  of  the  time  which  was  slowly  emerging 
into  public  notice,  would  not  be  found  upon  the 
shelves  of  his  library.  In  consequence,  it  was  a 
good  deal  of  a  revelation  to  the  boy  when  he  came 
to  know  that  such  a  poet  as  Shelley  had  even  ex- 
isted. With  considerable  difficulty  he  succeeded 
in  procuring  most  of  the  dead  author's  then  little 
read  books.  The  influence  of  this  writer  af- 
fected him  profoundly,  and,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
not  altogether  happily.  It  operated  to  strength- 
en tendencies  and  to  exaggerate  characteristics 
which,  in  his  case,  stood  in  need  of  repression  and 
lessening.  In  particular,  the  vagueness  which 
pervades  much  of  Shelley's  poetry  had  assuredly 
no  effect  in  correcting  that  disposition  toward 
obscurity,  not  necessarily  in  his  ideas,  but  in  the 
expression  of  his  ideas,  which  remained  to  the, 
last  Browning's  besetting  literary  sin,;__ 

It  was  in  the  autumn  of  1832  while  fully  under 
the  influence  of  this  author  that  he  composed  his 
first  printed  work.  His  father,  proud  as  he  was 
of  his  son's  talents,  had  no  disposition  to  sink 
money  in  the  publication  of  the  poem.  It  is  not 
impossible,  brought  up  as  he  had  been  in  the  old 
school  of  versification,  that  he  failed  to  under- 
stand it.     Nor,  in  fact,  was  it  then  a  favorable 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


time  for  bringing  out  poetry  of  any  sort  what- 
ever. The  great  Georgian  intellectual  outburst 
had  spent  itself.  It  had  been  followed  by  one  of 
those  regularly  recurring  periods  in  the  history 
of  literature  when  the  human  mind  seems  for  a 
while  to  need  to  lie  fallow  as  a  result  of  previous 
overproduction.  At  any  rate,  the  literary  palate 
had  lost  its  relish  for  the  food  which  it  had  once 
eagerly  craved,  and  had  not  yet  found  another 
kind  to  suit  its  altered  taste.  The  pubHc  had 
become  surfeited  with  verse.  They  not  merely 
refused  to  read  it,  they  refused  to  buy  it.  There 
was  this  justification  for  their  attitude  that  most 
of  what  then  came  out  was  not  worth  either  read- 
ing or  buying.  It  was  frequently  assumed  and 
asserted  by  the  professional  critics  that  the  day 
for  poetry  was  past.  Accordingly,  without  the 
prerequisite  of  paying  for  its  production,  no 
publisher  would  think  of  allowing  his  name  to 
go  upon  the  title-page  of  almost  any  book  of 
verse,  least  of  all  upon  that  of  an  untried  author 
who  was  as  yet  little  more  than  a  boy.  An  aunt 
of  Browning's,  however,  came  forward  at  this 
juncture  and  undertook  to  bear  the  expense. 
Accordingly,  early  in  1833  a  little  volume  of 
about  seventy  pages  made  its  appearance,  bear- 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING 


ing  the  imprint  of  Saunders,  Otley  &  Co.,  a 
firm  in  Conduit  Street.  It  was  entitled,  "  Paul- 
ine, or  the  Fragment  of  a  Confession." 

The  poem  contained  over  a  thousand  lines  of 
blank  verse,  fully  as  mystical  as  any  and  a 
good  deal  more  mystical  than  much  that  Brown- 
ing subsequently  wrote.  It  was  anonymous 
and  the  secret  of  its  authorship  was  long  main- 
tained. A  copy  of  this  original  edition  is  now 
one  of  the  rarest  of  volumes.  In  1890  it  was 
said  that  only  five  were  known  to  exist;  and  it  is 
still  safe  to  assert  that  the  pretty  thorough  search 
which  has  gone  on  since  that  time  has  not  suc- 
ceeded in  tripling  the  number.  Accordingly, 
when  one  does  appear  in  the  market  it  com- 
mands a  price  absurdly  disproportionate  to  its 
actual  value.  In  January,  1896,  a  copy  contain- 
ing on  the  fly-leaf  some  observations  upon  the 
poem  by  the  poet  himself  was  sold  by  auction 
and  brought  the  comfortable  sum  of  one  hun- 
dred and  forty-five  pounds.  It  is  mainly  those 
who  never  read  poetry  that  can  afford  to  pay 
such  prices  for  it. 

Browning,  who  at  this  period  combined  with 
the  dove-like  guilelessness  of  youth  something 
of  the  craft  of  the  serpent,  paved  the  way  him- 


rHE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


self  for  one  fairly  favorable  notice  of  the  coming 
book.  William  Johnson  Fox,  preacher,  orator, 
and  essayist,  was  then  a  potent  power  in  a  not  in- 
considerable section  of  the  literary  world.  He 
was  at  that  time  the  editor  of  The  Monthly  Re- 
pository,  a  Unitarian  periodical,  which  he  was 
trying  to  divest  of  its  theological  character  and 
replace  by  one  more  distinctly  literary  and  politi- 
cal. To  him  Browning,  while  still  a  boy,  had 
been  introduced  by  a  female  friend  named  Eliza/ 
Flower.  She  was  the  elder  of  two  sisters,  one  of 
whom,  more  easily  recognized  by  her  married 
name  of  Sarah  Flower  Adams,  is  well  known  to 
the  religious  world  by  her  hymn  beginning 
"Nearer,  My  God,  to  Thee."  Eliza  Flower 
was  a  musician,  and  attained  no  mean  reputa- 
tion as  a  composer  of  music.  With  this  refine^ 
and  highly  gifted  woman,  nine  years  his  senior,/ 
the  youthful  Browning  did  the  wisest  and  most 
creditable  thing  he  could  do  as  a  boy  by  falling 
in  love.  She  died  at  a  comparatively  early  age; 
but  to  the  last  day  of  his  life  the  poet  cherished 
her  memory  with  peculiar  tenderness.  To  Fox, 
Eliza  Flower  had  shown  a  collection  of  short 
poems  written  by  her  boy-admirer  when  he  was 
about  twelve.     To  it  he  had  given  the  name  of 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING 


Incondita — a  title  which  he  might  appropriately 
have  applied  to  a  good  deal  of  his  later  work. 
The  critic  did  not  recommend  these  pieces  for 
publication,  but  he  recognized  in  their  writer  the 
possession  of  unquestionable  poetic  power.  The 
manuscript  containing  them  was  entirely  de- 
stroyed. Much  to  the  grief  of  his  partisans,  the 
copy  made  by  Miss  Flower  shared  the  same  fate 
at  the  hands  of  the  poet,  when  later  in  life  it  came 
into  his  possession. 

Browning,  now  about  to  make  his  first  venture 
in  print,  bethought  him  of  the  kindly  critic  of 
his  unpublished  early  verse.  Accordingly  he 
sent  him  a  letter  signed  with  his  initials  announc- 
ing the  coming  appearance  of  his  poem.  It  is 
printed  in  full  by  one  of  his  biographers,  and 
though  it  has  been  long  before  the  public  no  one 
of  his  admirers  seems  to  be  conscious  of  the  fact 
that  never  was  there  a  more  transparent  attempt 
to  secure,  under  the  guise  of  humility,  a  favor- 
able review.  "Perhaps,"  wrote  he,  "by  the  aid 
,of  the  subjoined  initials  and  a  little  reflection 
you  may  recollect  an  oddish  sort  of  boy  who  had 
the  honor  of  being  introduced  to  you  at  Hackney 
some  years  back — at  that  time  a  sayer  of  verse 
^nd  a  doer  of  it,  and  whose  doing  you  had  a  little 


THE  EARLY   LITERARY   CAREER 


previously  commended  after  a  fashion — (whether 
in  earnest  or  not,  God  knows) :  that  individual  it 
is  who  takes  the  liberty  of  addressing  one  whose 
slight  commendation  then  was  more  thought  of 
than  all  the  gun,  drum,  and  trumpet  of  praise 
would  be  now,  and  to  submit  to  you  a  free  and 
easy  sort  of  thing  which  he  wrote  some  months 
ago  *on  one  leg'  and  which  comes  out  this  week 
— having  either  heard  or  dreamed  that  you  con- 
tribute to  The  Westminster.  Should  it  be  found 
too  insignificant  for  cutting  up,  I  shall  no  less 
remain,  dear  sir,  Your  most  obedient  servant, 
R.  B." 

This  must  be  considered,  if  we  take  the  youth 
of  the  writer  into  account,  a  most  skilful  device 
for  securing  a  review  of  one's  work  which  even 
if  not  favorable  would  not  be  hostile.  A  delight- 
ful boyishness  pervades  the  whole  letter.  There 
is  the  affected  depreciation  of  the  poem  itself  as 
a  free  and  easy  thing  written  hastily.  Better 
still  is  that  appreciation  of  the  commendation 
bestowed  by  the  critic  upon  the  verses  produced 
at  that  earlier  period  of  life  when  such  praise  was 
worth  more  to  him  than  thunders  of  applause 
would  be  at  the  time  of  writing,  now  that  he  had 
reached,  it  may  be  added,  his  present  advanced 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING 


age  of  nearly  twenty-one.  Nor  is  there  any  lack 
of  skill  displayed  in  the  suggestion  that  the  book 
would  furnish  materials  for  cutting  up  in  The 
Westminster  Review. 

The  appeal  to  Fox  was  successful.  It  was  not, 
however,  in  The  Westminster  that  his  notice  of 
the  poem  appeared,  but  in  The  Monthly  Reposi- 
tory for  April.  There  he  welcomed  the  work 
with  a  warm  and  unquestionably  sincere  eulo- 
gium.  In  it  he  gave  distinct  expression  to  his 
belief  that  a  writer  had  come  who  was  entitled  to 
be  called  a  poet.  He  had  previously  reviewed  the 
volume  of  1833  of  the  then  little-known  Tennyson 
with  a  good  deal  of  enthusiasm.  One  sentence 
of  this  article  on  *'  Pauline"  is  indeed  remarkable 
for  its  early  reference  to  the  two  great  poets  of 
the  Victorian  era.  "We  felt  certain  of  Tenny- 
son," he  wrote,  "before  we  saw  the  book  by  a 
few  verses  which  had  struggled  into  a  newspaper; 
we  are  not  the  less  certain  of  the  author  of 
*  Pauline.'"  All  of  us  are  wise  after  the  event. 
Rarely  has  it  been  given  to  one  man  to  foresee 
and  predict  the  future  glory  of  two  great  writers 
of  widely  diverse  gifts,  who  were  then  either 
not  known  at  all  or  known  only  to  limited  circles 
made  up  largely  of  personal  friends. 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


The  social  and  literary  influence  of  Fox  was 
then  great.  It  unquestionably  had  the  effect  of 
procuring  for  the  young  and  unknown  author  a 
favorable  hearing  in  quarters  which  otherwise 
would  in  all  probability  have  paid  little  heed  to 
his  production.  Here  it  is  desirable  to  give  a 
brief  account  of  a  certain  class  of  critical  period- 
icals, which,  well  known  as  they  soon  came  to  be, 
were  then  just  beginning  to  influence  or  direct 
public  opinion;  for  it  was  about  this  period  that 
the  weekly  had  begun  to  displace  the  quarterly 
and  the  monthly  from  the  supreme  position  which 
these  had  long  held  as  arbiters  of  literary  merit. 
These  weeklies  were  then,  as  now,  of  two  classes: 
the  purely  literary  and  the  combined  literary  and 
political.  Five  of  them  occupied  at  that  time 
a  specially  prominent  position.  The  oldest  of 
them  belonged  to  the  second  class.  It  was  The 
Examiner,  which  had  been  established  in  1808 
by  John  and  Leigh  Hunt,  and  was  now  under 
the  control  of  the  noted  journalist,  Albany  Fon- 
blanque.  With  him  came  to  be  associated  in  this 
fourth  decade  of  the  century  John  Forster  as  lit- 
erary and  dramatic  critic.  Its  main  rivals  were 
The  Spectator  and  The  Atlas.  The  oldest  of  the 
other  class  was  The  Literary  Gazette^  which  had 


OF  ROBERT  RBOWNING  13 

been  founded  in  1816.  At  that  time  it  still  re- 
tained its  lead  in  the  general  popular  estimate; 
but  its  influence  was  steadily  lessening  before  that 
of  its  rival,  The  AthencBum,  which  had  been 
established  in  1828. 

From  some  of  these  critical  periodicals  the 
poem  received  favorable  mention.  This  was 
noticeably  true  of  The  Atlas  and  The  Athenceum. 
The  article  in  the  former  concluded,  indeed,  with 
the  declaration  that  the  work  had  created  in  the 
reviewer's  mind  just  so  much  interest  that  he 
would  be  induced  to  look  with  curiosity  to  the 
author's  next  essay.  The  Athenceum  was,  if 
anything,  even  more  cordial.  It  quoted  pas- 
sages from  the  poem.  Still  it  is  evident  that  the 
critic  saw  that  for  the  work  as  a  whole  there 
would  be  little  recognition.  In  truth,  his  clos- 
ing words  gave  one  further  example  of  the  uni- 
versal despondency  which  had  at  that  time  over- 
taken the  English  race  as  to  the  future  of  the 
highest  form  of  literature.  "The  day  is  past," 
he  said  mournfully,  ''for  either  fee  or  fame  in  the 
service  of  the  muse;  but  to  one  who  sings  so 
naturally,  poetry  must  be  as  easy  as  music  to 
the  bird,  and  no  doubt  it  has  a  solace  all  its 
own." 


14  THE   EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

But  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  three 
periodicals  whose  opinions  have  been  quoted 
represent  the  universal  attitude.  "Somew^hat 
mystical,"  ran  the  criticism  In  The  Literary 
Gazette,  "somewhat  poetical,  somewhat  sensual, 
and  not  a  little  unintelligible — this  is  a  dreamy 
volume  without  an  object  and  unfit  for  publica- 
tion." Even  more  concisely  was  the  poem  de- 
scribed in  Taifs  Edinburgh  Magazine,  the  organ 
of  the  Northern  Whigs.  It  is  there  simply  men- 
tioned as  "a  piece  of  pure  bewilderment."  It 
was  this  brief  and  contemptuous  notice  that  fore- 
stalled and  prevented  the  publication  In  the 
magazine  of  the  review  of  the  poem  which  John 
Stuart  Mill  had  prepared  for  this  periodical. 
But  the  remark  that  Mill  made  on  the  margin  of 
the  book  came  a  few  years  after  to  Browning's 
knowledge  and  filled  him  with  just  pleasure. 
"Is  there  not  somewhere,"  he  wrote  to  Miss 
Barrett,  in  February,  1845, "the  ^^^^^  book  I  first 
printed  when  a  boy,  with  John  Mill,  the  meta- 
physical head,  his  marginal  note  that  'the  writer 
possesses  a  deeper  self-consciousness  than  I  ever 
knew  In  a  sane  human  being.'  "  ^ 

'  "Letters  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett,"  New 
York,  1899,  vol.  I,  p.  28. 


OF  ROBERT  RROWNING  15 


The  point  of  view,  however,  is  everything. 
Sanity  was  the  one  thing  found  lacking  by  the 
reviewer  in  Erasers  Magazine^  the  London  organ 
of  the  Tories.  That  periodical  was  then  bring- 
ing out  a  series  of  critical  articles  entitled,  "Poets 
of  the  Day."  These  articles  were  somewhat 
contemptuously  headed  Batch  the  First,  Batch 
the  Second,  and  so  on,  as  the  numbers  succes- 
sively appeared.  In  spite  of  the  not  altogether 
respectful  heading,  it  is  right  to  remark  that  the 
notices  were  occasionally  of  a  laudatory  char- 
acter. In  the  number  for  December,  1833, 
"Pauline"  received  attention.  The  review  opens 
with  a  citation  of  the  Latin  quotation  which 
Browning  had  placed  at  the  beginning  of  his 
book.  "Non  duhito  quin  titulus,  etc.,"  it  said, 
"quotes  the  author  of  'Pauline'  from  Cornelius 
Agrippa;  which  we,  shearing  the  sentence  of 
its  lengthy  continuation,  translate  thus:  we  are 
under  no  kind  of  doubt  about  the  title  to  be  given 
to  you,  my  poet,  you  being,  beyond  all  question, 
as  mad  as  Cassandra,  without  any  of  the  power 
to  prophesy  like  her  or  to  construct  a  connected 
sentence  like  anybody  else."  The  article  went 
on  to  designate  him  as  the  Mad  Poet  of  the  Batch; 
as  being  mad  not  in  one  direction  only  but  in  all. 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


But  no  review,  whether  friendly  or  hostile, 
could  have  then  or  did  have  the  slightest  in- 
fluence upon  the  sale  of  "Pauline."  None  at 
any  rate  could  have  saved  the  work  from  obliv- 
ion, if  left  to  itself.  The  poet,  toward  the  close 
of  his  life,  when  Browning  societies  were  in  the 
heyday  of  their  vigor  and  were  scattering  his 
name  far  and  wide,  came  seemingly  to  be  rather 
proud  of  the  ill  success  which  according  to  him 
had  attended  his  two  earliest  ventures  into 
poetry.  He  exaggerated,  perhaps  unconsciously, 
the  disfavor  with  which  they  had  been  received. 
Of  this  work  In  particular  he  represented  It  as 
being  the  completest  of  failures  from  the  point  of 
view  of  sale.  *'I  willingly  repeat,"  said  he  in  a 
letter  of  1886,  "that  to  the  best  of  my  belief  no 
single  copy  of  the  original  edition  of  'Pauline' 
found  a  buyer;  the  book  was  undoubtedly  still- 
born— and  that  despite  the  kindly  offices  of  many 
friends  who  did  their  best  to  bring  about  a  suc- 
cessful birth."  '  Certainly  the  fact  of  his  ever 
having  written  such  a  poem  soon  passed  away 
almost  entirely  from  the  memory  of  men.  One 
reason  for  this  was  doubtless  that   he  himself 

'  "Letters  from  Robert  Browning  to  Various  Correspondents," 
edited  by  T.  J.  Wise,  London,  privately  printed,  1896,  vol.  II,  p.  58. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  17 

came  to  have  an  unfavorable  opinion  of  it.  He 
therefore  largely  kept  to  himself  the  secret  of  its 
existence  and  authorship. 

In  the  course  of  his  intimacy,  how^ever,  w^ith 
the  w^oman  he  was  soon  to  call  his  wife  he  had 
come  to  disclose  the  facts.  In  January,  1846, 
Miss  Barrett  wrote  to  him  that  she  was  anxious 
to  have  the  poem,  in  fact  determined  to  have  it 
in  a  day  or  two.  "Must  you  see  'Pauline'.?" 
he  asked  almost  plaintively.  If  so,  he  begged 
her  to  wait  a  few  days  till  he  could  correct  the 
misprints  in  it  and  write  its  history.  It  was  so 
evident,  indeed,  that  he  was  reluctant  to  have  her 
see  it  at  all  that  a  little  later  she  is  found  priding 
herself  upon  her  virtue  in  not  sending  for  it  to 
the  booksellers,  before  she  knew  positively 
whether  he  would  much  dislike  to  have  her  read 
it.  Browning  continued  to  protest.  The  poem, 
he  said,  was  altogether  foolish,  and  it  was  not 
boy-like,  and  he  had  rather  she  saw  real  infantine 
efforts — verses  at  six  years  old,  drawings  still 
earlier — anything  but  this  ambiguous,  feverish 
production.  But  the  thought  of  her  buying  it 
at  a  bookseller's  amused  him.  "  I  smile  in  glori- 
ous security,"  he  wrote, — "having  a  whole  bale 
of  sheets  at  the  house-top.     He  never  knew  my 


i8  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

name  even  and  I  withdrew  them  after  a  little 
while."  ^  The  outcome  of  it  all  was  that  Miss 
Barrett  had  to  content  herself  with  a  promise  that 
she  should  see  the  work  some  day. 

"Pauline"  in  fact  was  so  thoroughly  forgotten 
that  for  two  decades  it  was  hardly  mentioned  by 
any  one  in  connection  v/ith  Browning's  name. 
Some  twenty  years  after  its  publication  Dante 
Gabriel  Rossetti,  then  a  young  poet  and  painter, 
came  across  a  copy  of  it  in  the  library  of  the  Brit- 
ish Museum.  He  was  profoundly  struck  by  it. 
Furthermore,  so  confident  was  he  that  no  one  but 
the  author  of  "Paracelsus"  could  have  been  its 
author  that  he  wrote  to  ask  Browning,  who  was 
then  in  Florence,  if  this  were  not  the  case.  In 
his  letter  he  stated  that  as  the  poem  was  not 
otherwise  procurable  he  had  copied  the  whole  of 
it  with  his  own  hand.  Browning  returned  an 
affirmative  answer.  This  seems  to  have  been 
the  first  discovery  of  the  book  and  the  poet's  first 
acknowledgment  of  its  authorship  to  any  outside 
of  his  immediate  circle.  It  was  not  included 
among  his  collected  works  until  the  edition  of 
1868.     In  a  brief  preface  to  it  then  he  declared 

'  "Letters  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett,"  New 
York,  1899,  '^'^l-  I)  PP-  3S6,  390,  400. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  19 

that  he  retained  it  with  extreme  repugnance. 
It  was  nothing,  he  said,  but  a  matter  of  necessity 
that  led  him  to  reprint  it.  He  knew  that  copies 
of  it  were  in  existence;  that  sooner  or  later  it 
was  the  intention  to  have  it  republished.  So 
he  sought  to  forestall  any  action  of  the  sort  by 
correcting  some  misprints — not  a  single  syllable 
had  been  changed,  he  asserted — and  by  intro- 
ducing it  with  an  exculpatory  word.  "The 
thing,"  he  wrote,  "was  my  earliest  attempt  at 
'poetry,  always  dramatic  in  principle,  and  so 
many  utterances  of  so  many  imaginary  persons, 
not  mine,'  which  I  have  since  written  according 
to  a  scheme  less  extravagant  and  scale  less  im- 
practicable than  were  ventured  upon  in  this  crude 
preliminary  sketch."  This  accords  with  the  in- 
scription written  as  early  as  1838  in  the  volume 
which  has  been  already  noted  as  commanding 
the  price  of  over  seven  hundred  dollars. 

Before  taking  into  consideration  his  next  work, 
it  is  desirable  to  give  a  brief  outline  of  Browning's 
personal  history  up  to  the  time  of  his  first  anony- 
mous publication.  His  education,  outside  of  the 
private  instruction  he  received  and  of  the  attend- 
ance upon  certain  schools  in  the  vicinity,  was 
limited  to  a  short  course  of  study  at  University 


20  THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 

College,  in  Gower  Street.  His  name  appears  on 
the  registrar's  books  for  the  opening  session  of 
1829-30.  But  he  did  not  remain  long.  Italy, 
he  was  wont  to  say,  was  his  university.  It  was 
certainly  one  of  the  best  schools  in  which  to  pur- 
sue later  study.  It  is  more  than  doubtful  if  it 
was  an  advantageous  one  for  a  begiiijierpossessed 
of  his  mental  characteristics.  "There  are  many 
other  kinds  of  education  besides  that  furnished 
by  the  university,  and  some  for  some  persons  far 
better.  For  Browning  I  doubt  if  any  would 
have  been  as  good,  and  his  failure  to  receive  it 
will,  it  is  to  be  feared,  have  in  the  long  run  a 
damaging  effect  upon  his  reputation.  His  writ- 
ings show  throughout  the  lack  of  that  final  re- 
sult of  thorough  training,  the  ability  of  the  com- 
municator of  ideas  to  put  himself  in  the  position 
of  the  recipient^ 
J  This  was  clearly  a  defect  that  belonged  to 
Browning  by  nature.  In  consequence  it  never 
could  have  been  fully  supplied.  Still  some  of  its 
worst  results  could  and  would  have  been  largely 
corrected  by  severe  intellectual  drill.  That 
would  never  have  added  to  his  greatness  as  a 
poet  in  those  bursts  of  inspiration  in  which  the 
poet  is  at  his  highest.     It  would  never  have  given 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING 


Strength  to  his  pinions  for  a  loftier  flight.  But 
no  writer,  however  eminent,  Hves  constantly,  or 
even  for  any  length  of  time,  in  a  state  of  exalta- 
tion. Upon  those  lower  levels  on  which  the 
mind  habitually  moves,  the  rigid  intellectual 
training  of  the  university  would  have  given 
clearness  to  expression,  it  would  in  particular 
have  prevented  resort  to  the  startling  abruptness 
of  transition  which  causes  the  existence  of  those 
perplexing  puzzles,  those  complicated  knots  of 
meaning  which  it  is  now  the  delight  of  the  dis- 
ciple to  unravel  or  to  fancy  that  he  has  un- 
ravelled^ 

In  the  long  run  these  intricacies  and  ambigui- 
ties of  expression  are  certain  to  affect  Browning's 
reputation  injuriously.  Indeed,  there  need  be 
no  hesitation  in  saying  that  from  the  very  outset 
they  have  so  affected  it.  But  they  will  affect  it 
far  more  in  the  future.  When  contemporary  in- 
terest has  disappeared,  it  is  the  artistic  perfection 
of  a  work  that  will  recommend  it  to  the  great 
body  of  readers.  What  is  bizarre,  what  is  gro- 
tesque, what  is  unnecessarily  obscure  will  then 
find  few  apologists  and  fewer  admirers.  In  our 
literature  there  is  a  marked  illustration  of  this 
truth  in  the  case  of  Donne.     He  was  in  his  time, 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 


as  Ben  Jonson  expressed  it,  the  great  lord  of 
wit.  So  far  as  intellectual  power  is  concerned, 
he  could  hardly  reckon  a  superior  among  his 
contemporaries.  He  still  retains  a  band  of  de- 
voted admirers,  and  to  me  as  one  of  the  number 
he  seems  well  worthy  of  the  admiration  they  be- 
stow. But  he  will  always  be  caviare  to  the 
general.  The  crabbed  diction,  the  rugged 
rhymes,  the  inharmonious  versification,  the  ob- 
scure phraseology,  all  these  frequently  recurring 
as  they  do  would  continue  to  repel  the  multitude 
from  attempting  to  crack  the  kernel  of  a  nut  even 
were  it  to  contain  meat  more  delicious  than  that 
which  Donne's  own  writings  afford. 

Two  years  after  came  Browning's  first  ap- 
pearance in  literature  under  his  own  name. 
This  was  then  and  for  a  long  time  following 
usually  regarded  as  his  first  actual  appearance. 
It  was  in  the  summer  of  1835  that  his  poem 
came  out  entitled  "Paracelsus."  The  composi- 
tion of  it  had  taken  up  a  large  share  of  the  pre- 
ceding winter.  (/'Tro  the  subject  he  was  led  by  his 
fondness  for  out-of-the-way  learning  and  by  his 
interest  in  mediaevalism  and  mysticism  which 
was,  or  had  become  a  part  of  his  nature^'  The 
life  of  the  hero  of  the  piece,  who  has  been  vari- 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  23 

ously  viewed  as  an  adventurous  quack  and  as  a 
great  pioneer  in  medical  discovery,  had  been 
suggested  to  him  by  a  foreign  friend,  Comte  de 
Rupert-Montclar,  to  whom  the  finished  work 
was  dedicated.  But  on  reflection  the  suggest- 
tion  had  been  withdrawn  by  its  maker.  There 
was  no  opportunity  to  introduce  the  subject  of 
love,  and  upon  love,  the  Frenchman  sagely  re- 
marked, every  young  man  has,  of  course,  some- 
thing new  to  say.  Browning  apparently  had 
nothing  new  to  say.  But  he  was  not  deterred 
from  the  project  by  this  fact.  He  decided  to 
take  the  life  of  Paracelsus  as  his  subject  and  to 
treat  it  in  his  own  way. 

The  poem  was  finished  in  March,  1835.  The 
difficulty  was  then  to  find  a  publisher.  To 
Moxon  all  aspiring  unknown  poets  applied,  be- 
cause he  had  written  poetry  himself.  Accord- 
ingly, to  Moxon  Browning  went  first.  That 
publisher  declined  even  inspecting  the  manu- 
script. There  was  no  money  in  verse,  he  de- 
clared, and  he  felt  that  he  had  done  his  share  in 
bringing  out  unprofitable  ventures  of  that  sort. 
After  trying  one  or  two  other  firms  to  no  effect,  the 
poem  was  finally  taken  by  Effingham  Wilson,  the 
same  man  who  brought  out  Tennyson's  volume 


24  THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 

of  1830.  It  was  clearly  not  sought  for  eagerly 
by  him,  for  it  was  Browning's  father  who  paid 
the  expense  of  the  publication.  It  can  be 
added  that  his  father  never  got  his  money  back 
from  the  proceeds  of  the  sale.  This,  though  not 
in  the  least  surprising  to  the  students  of  the  liter- 
ary history  of  the  period,  seems  to  surprise  some 
of  the  poet's  biographers  profoundly. 

But  though  "  Paracelsus"  was  not  a  work  which 
paid  the  expense  of  publication,  its  appearance 
announced,  to  all  who  had  eyes  to  see,  the  coming 
of  a  great  original  poet.  The  form  into  which  it 
was  cast  partook  of  the  dramatic.  It  was  divided 
into  acts  corresponding  to  five  successive  epochs 
in  the  life  of  its  hero.  Conversation  or  rather 
discourse  goes  on  between  the  few  personages 
that  appear.  But  in  no  proper  sense  of  that 
word  is  the  poem  a  drama,  nor  did  Browning  so 
intend  it.  He  took  care,  indeed,  to  guard  against 
any  such  misinterpretation  of  it,  though  some  of 
his  later  disciples  have  either  been  ignorant  of 
his  caution  or  have  chosen  to  ignore  it.  In  the 
preface  to  the  original  edition  he  gave  full  recog- 
nition to  the  fact  that  the  work  did  not  conform 
to  the  canons  of  stage  representation  and  that  it 
had  not  been  prepared  with  that  object  in  view. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  25 

"I  have  endeavored,"  he  said,  "to  write  a  poem 
and  not  a  drama."  It  is  as  a  poem  alone  there- 
fore that  it  is  entitled  to  be  judged. 

Whether  the  picture  given  of  the  character  of 
Paracelsus  be  true  or  no  does  not  strictly 
enter  into  the  discussion  of  the  literary  merits  of 
the  work.  Certain  it  is,  however,  that  the  por- 
trayal has  profoundly  affected  the  opinion  enter- 
tained in  these  latter  days  of  the  man  portrayed; 
and  if  there  has  been  a  revolution  of  sentiment 
in  his  favor,  to  this  one  poem  probably  more  than 
to  any  other  single  cause  may  be  attributed  the 
change,  at  least  in  the  English-speaking  world. 
It  is  noticeable  that  Browning  subsequently  fell 
into  the  error,  pardonable,  perhaps,  at  the  time, 
of  deriving  our  English  word  ''bombast"  from 
the  name  of  the  hero  of  the  piece.  This  in  full 
was  Phillipus  Aureolus  Theophrastus  Bombas- 
tus  von  Hohenheim.  "'Bombast,'  his  proper 
name,"  he  wrote,  "probably  acquired  from  the 
characteristic  phraseology  of  his  lectures  that 
unlucky  significance  which  it  has  since  retained." 
The  student  of  English  etymology,  much  hard- 
ened to  derivations  of  this  sort,  scarcely  needs  to 
be  told  that  "bombast,"  like  the  corresponding 
"fustian,"  is  a  word  derived  from  late  Latin 


26  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

through  the  Old  French  and  designates  strictly 
a  kind  of  coarse  cotton  cloth  which  from  its  use 
in  stuffing  and  padding  clothes  came  to  adopt 
the  transferred  sense  of  swollen  or  inflated  lan- 
guage. 

"Paracelsus"  was  really  the  first,  as  it  has  re- 
mained, one  of  the  finest  of  a  long  series  of  stud- 
ies in  character  and  sensation  in  which  Browning 
was  to  exhibit  peculiar  excellence.  There  is  not 
here  the  time  nor  is  this  the  place  to  give  a  full 
account  of  the  poem.  A  most  marked  attribute 
of  it  is  the  high  intellectual  character  accorded  to 
the  hero,  the  original  loftiness  of  his  aims,  his 
aspirations  for  a  success  too  great  for  mortal  to 
achieve,  with  his  disdain  of  the  helps  by  which 
mortals  attain  to  whatever  success  they  achieve, 
the  inevitable  reaction  and  degradation  that  fol- 
low failure,  and  the  final  purification  that  comes 
from  trial  and  sorrow  and  suff'ering.  Paracel- 
sus learns  after  long  experience  the  lesson  that 
the  pursuit  of  knowledge  pure  and  simple,  while 
setting  little  store  on  the  element  of  human  sym- 
pathy and  love,  furnishes  a  barren  harvest  even 
from  the  point  of  view  of  knowledge  itself.  To 
him,  as  to  inferior  men,  as  he  looks  back  upon  a 
career  of  effort  which  has  been  wasted  and  at- 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING 


tempts  which  have  miscarried,  comes  that  de- 
spondency which  haunts  the  heart  of  even  those 
seemingly  the  most  fortunate.  It  is  Hfe's  ever- 
recurring  tragedy  of  faith  that  has  failed,  of  ex- 
pectation that  has  been  disappointed,  and  of  as- 
piration that  has  died,  which  finds  expression  in 
the  inquiry  which  sooner  or  later  every  thought- 
ful man  puts  to  himself  as  he  compares  what  is 
with  what  was  desired  or  hoped  to  be — Is  this 
all?  Is  this  what  I  have  longed  for,  struggled 
for,  dreamed  of  as  worthy  of  being  accomplished  ? 
Such  is  the  inquiry  which  Paracelsus  directs 
to  his  own  heart.  In  the  moment  of  highest  ap- 
parent success  he  does  not  hide  his  deep  discon- 
tent with  life.  He  had  failed.  He  was  miser- 
able. Yet  to  the  outside  world  he  had  at  the  very 
time  reached  the  summit  of  human  achievement. 
His  name  was  in  every  one's  mouth.  His  lect- 
ures were  thronged  by  listening  crowds  who 
hung  upon  his  words,  treasured  his  sayings,  wor- 
shipped his  person.  Even  the  chosen  friend  of 
his  youth  who  had  sought  to  dissuade  him  from 
the  career  he  had  marked  out  for  himself,  who 
had  forewarned  him  of  failure,  is  imposed  upon 
by  this  universal  acclaim  which  hails  him  as  the 
miracle  of  men,  the  deliverer  of  the  race  from 


28  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

the  bondage  of  antiquated  dogma  and  belief. 
Not  so  Paracelsus  himself.  He  recognizes  the 
unsubstantiality  of  the  basis  upon  which  his  rep- 
utation rests.  Not  in  the  least  blinded  by  the 
glitter  of  present  approval,  he  perceives  plainly 
that  the  hour  of  his  degradation  is  on  its  way, 
and  he  confesses  the  moral  failure  which  fore- 
shadows the  coming  of  the  personal  one.  The 
general  declension  in  the  aims  of  Paracelsus,  the 
substitution  of  inferior  motives  for  the  lofty  ones 
by  which  he  had  originally  been  actuated,  is  typi- 
fied in  the  beautiful  lyric  in  the  fourth  act  begin- 
ning with  the  line, 

"  Over  the  seas  our  galley  went" 

So  much  for  the  character  of  the  work;  it  re- 
mains to  consider  its  reception  by  the  public. 
The  present  age  which  has  been  fertile  in  myth- 
ical stories  about  Browning's  early  career,  has 
more  than  once  loudly  proclaimed  that  "Paracel- 
sus" was  received  by  the  public  unfavorably: 
perhaps  with  even  less  favor  than  was  "Paul- 
ine"; that  in  truth  it  was  a  failure.  If  by  failure 
is  meant  that  it  had  no  large  sale,  the  assertion 
may  be  conceded  to  be  perfectly  true.  But  in 
such  a  fact  there  was  at  that  time  nothing  excep- 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  29 

tional.  During  the  decade  in  which  it  made  its 
appearance  no  poem  or  volume  of  poems  pos- 
sessed of  distinct  literary  quality  had  a  large  sale. 
This  was  true  even  of  the  "Philip  Van  Artevelde" 
of  Henry  Taylor,  which  came  out  in  May,  1834. 
That  work,  the  most  successful  of  all  the  works 
of  high  grade  produced  during  the  period  in 
question,  hardly  more  than  paid  the  expense  of 
its  production,  if,  indeed,  it  can  be  said  to  have 
done  as  much  as  that.  If  at  any  time  during 
the  nineteenth  century  the  profession  of  poet 
deserved  Milton's  characterization  of  it  as  **the 
homely  slighted  shepherd's  trade,"  it  was  during 
its  fourth  decade. 

But  in  every  other  respect,  save  that  of  sale, 
"Paracelsus"  was  the  most  unqualified  of  suc- 
cesses. It  gave  its  author  at  once  a  recognized 
position  in  the  world  of  letters.  It  brought  him 
the  acquaintance  and  regard  of  many  men  of 
conspicuous  eminence  in  various  fields  of  intel- 
lectual activity.  With  some  it  gave  birth  to  in- 
timate friendship.  The  authorship  of  "Paul- 
ine" was  known  to  but  few.  Accordingly  by 
most  readers  this  second  poem  was  believed  to  be 
"his  earliest  work.  More  and  more,  as  time  went 
on,  this  continued  to  be  the  impression.     By  all 


3° 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 


men  possessed  of  keen  critical  discernment 
"Paracelsus,"  as  the  first  production  of  a  man 
who  had  not  yet  reached  his  twenty-third  birth- 
day, was  looked  upon  as  giving  promise  of  a  brill- 
iant future.  Defects  it  admittedly  had;  but  in 
their  eyes  these  were  far  more  than  counterbal- 
anced by  its  merits.  The  feeling  about  the 
greatness  of  the  work  grew  as  time  went  on  and 
men  had  had  sufficient  leisure  to  become  fully 
acquainted  with  it.  No  one  who  makes  himself 
familiar  with  much  of  the  contemporary  com- 
ment about  the  man  and  the  book  can  hardly 
help  discovering  the  steadily  growing  recognition 
of  Browning's  genius  and  the  glowing  anticipa- 
tions that  were  then  entertained  of  the  loftiness 
of  the  achievements  he  was  to  accomplish.  For 
example,  two  anonymous  sonnets  addressed  "to 
the  author  of  'Paracelsus,'"  which  appeared  in 
the  New  Monthly  Magazine  for  September, 
1836,  give  full  expression  to  the  belief  in  his 
future  greatness  which  even  at  that  early  period 
many  had  come  to  cherish. 

It  is  all  the  more  desirable  to  bring  out  dis- 
tinctly the  contemporary  success  of  "Paracel- 
sus," in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word  success, 
because  Browning  himself  was  in  a  measure  re- 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  31 

sponsible  for  the  contrary  belief.  In  his  later 
years  one  gets  the  impression  that  he  was  almost 
as  eager  to  underrate  the  good  fortune  of  his 
first  poems  as  he  was  to  contradict  the  reports 
of  the  ill  fortune  of  his  plays.  A  disposition 
of  this  sort  showed  itself  at  a  somewhat  early 
period.  Late  in  1845  ^^  wrote  to  the  woman  he 
was  soon  to  wed  that  as  compared  with  the  brill- 
iant success  of  Talfourd's  "Ion,"  his  "Paracel- 
sus" had  been  a  dead  failure.  There  was  no 
real  justification  for  a  comparison  of  this  sort. 
The  circumstances  attending  the  publication  of 
the  two  poems  were  essentially  different.  Tal- 
fourd's name  had  been  long  before  the  public. 
He  had  appeared  as  an  author  before  Browning 
was  born.  He  had  been  a  frequent  contributor 
to  periodical  literature,  he  had  made  for  himself 
a  reputation  at  the  bar.  His  tragedy  of  "Ion," 
previously  printed  for  private  circulation,  had 
been  produced  in  May,  1836.  Largely  through 
the  acting  of  Macready  it  had  gained  a  success 
on  the  stage,  which  had  aroused  a  corresponding 
curiosity  among  readers.  The  feeling  was  nat- 
urally reflected  in  the  sale  of  the  work  in  a  pub- 
lished form.  In  this  same  letter  Browning  went 
on  to  say  that  until  Forster's  notice  in  The  Ex- 


32 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 


aminer  every  journalist  that  thought  it  worth 
while  to  allude  to  his  poem  treated  it  with  entire 
contempt,  beginning  with  The  AthencBum.  Out 
of  a  long  string  of  notices  which  his  publisher  re- 
ceived, each  one  vied  with  its  predecessor  in  ex- 
pressing disgust  at  his  "rubbish,"  until  some- 
thing of  a  change  was  effected  by  the  article  in 
The  Examiner  just  mentioned. 

The  ignorance,  however  great,  of  one  man  can 
not  well  be  deemed  sufficient  to  counterbalance 
the  knowledge,  however  slight,  of  another  man. 
It  would  therefore  be  presumptuous  in  me  to  call 
in  question  the  accuracy  of  these  assertions  of 
Browning,  because  diligent  search  has  not  en- 
abled me  to  find  anywhere  anything  to  justify 
them.  Unquestionably  the  earliest  notices  of 
his  poem  in  the  leading  critical  authorities  were 
wholly  inadequate.  The  limited  -  time  they 
took  for  examination  could  not  at  best  have  kept 
them  from  being  otherwise  than  unsatisfactory. 
"Paracelsus"  was  formally  published  on  Satur- 
day, the  fifteenth  of  August.  On  that  very  day 
two  reviews  of  it  appeared — one  in  The  Spectator 
and  one  in  The  Atlas.  Just  a  week  later  came 
out  the  notice  in  The  Athenceum.  Had  the 
writers  of  these  articles  been  adequate  to  the  task 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  33 

to  which  they  set  themselves  or  to  which  they 
were  set,  they  could  not  on  the  spur  of  the  mo- 
ment have  produced  anything  worthy  of  con- 
sideration. Still,  however  futile  their  criticisms 
were,  they  were  neither  vituperative  nor  con- 
temptuous. The  review  in  The  Spectator^  which 
was  a  column  long,  and  silly,  and  the  review  in 
The  AthencBum,  which  was  only  two  sentences 
long,  but  just  as  silly,  though  they  were  unfavor- 
able, contained  nothing  abusive.  In  fact,  all 
these  earliest  notices  of  the  poem  acknowledged 
the  ability  of  the  author.  The  Jtlas,  while 
deeming  it  unsatisfactory  as  a  whole,  declared 
that  its  writer  possessed  powers  far  above  the 
ordinary  level  and  eloquence  of  no  common 
order.  It  cited  passages  from  it  solely  on  ac- 
count of  their  beauty. 

Even  The  AthencBum,  which  Browning  mis- 
takenly assumed  to  have  been  the  first  to  review 
"Paracelsus, "did  not  deny  its  merit.  The  critic 
conceded  that  there  was  talent  in  the  poem, 
though  it  was  dreamy  and  obscure — leaving  us 
in  doubt  whether  the  critic  deemed  the  poem 
dreamy  and  obscure  or  the  talent.  Somewhat 
similar  observations,  the  result  of  glancing  at  the 
production  and  not  really  reading  it,  occur  oc- 


34  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

casionally  even  later.  "There  are  many  touches 
of  beauty,  almost  Shakespearian,  in  the  work," 
wrote  the  reviewer  in  The  Metropolitan  Magazine 
for  October;  "but  its  general  tone  is  homely  and 
its  contents  crude.  It  is  a  poem  ambitiously  un- 
popular." But  while  notices  of  this  sort  are 
found,  especially  before  men  had  had  time  to  read 
it  and  study  it,  there  is  nowhere  any  display  of  a 
contemptuous  attitude  in  any  organ  of  criticism  of 
the  highest  grade,  whatever  there  may  have  been 
elsewhere.  Several  of  them — like  The  Literary 
Gazette,  for  instance — did  not  notice  it  at  all. 
But  Browning's  assertion  that  the  poem  was 
laughed  to  scorn  and  was  denounced  as  rubbish 
until  the  appearance  of  Forster's  article  receives 
no  support  from  the  reviews  found  in  the  then 
most  authoritative  guides  of  public  opinion. 
The  general  attitude  taken  by  the  critics,  with 
their  hesitating  and  contradictory  pronounce- 
ments, is  more  accurately  set  forth  by  Fox  in  his 
article  on  the  poem  which  appeared  about  two 
months  after  its  publication.  "Their  verdict," 
he  wrote,  "is  already  given  in  favor  of  its  being 
a  work  of  genius  or  else  a  worthless  abortion — 
the  world  may  find  out  which;  and  when  the 
world  has  found  it  out,  the  critics  will  discover 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  35 

the  reasons  and  set  them  forth  in  learned  disser- 
tations."^ 

Further,  if  Forster's  review  estabhshed  a  bar- 
rier sufficient  to  withstand  the  raving,  roaring 
tide  of  detraction  which  had  set  in  against  the 
poem,  the  inundation  of  disparagement  could 
hardly  have  assumed  an  overwhelming  character 
by  the  time  he  had  erected  it.  "  Paracelsus"  ap- 
peared, as  we  have  seen,  in  the  middle  of  August, 
1835.  Forster's  review  was  published  in  The 
Examiner  for  September  6.  Consequently,  two 
or  three  weeks  at  farthest  is  all  the  time  that  op- 
probrium had  to  exercise  its  devastating  effect 
before  Forster's  review  checked  its  further  dem- 
onstration. This  article  indeed  is  credited  by 
Browning  himself  and  by  his  biographers  with 
an  almost  astounding  influence  upon  public 
opinion.  It  turns  up  with  regularity  in  about 
every  account  of  the  poet's  career  which  sets 
out  to  record  the  reception  of  this  poem,  "The 
great  event  in  the  history  of  '  Paracelsus,'  "  says 
Mrs.  Orr,  ''was  John  Forster's  article  in  The 
Examiner."  A  statement  to  the  same  effect 
is  made  in  the  "Personalia"  of  Mr.  Gosse. 
''The  Examiner,"  writes  he,  "contained  a  re- 
view  of  the    poem    at   great    length   in   which 

•  The  Monthly  Repository,  November,  1835. 


36  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

full  justice  was  done  to  Mr.  Browning's  gen- 
ius." "The  Examiner"  says  Mr.  Sharp,  "ac- 
knowledged it  to  be  a  work  of  unequivocal 
power  and  predicted  for  its  author  a  brilliant 
career." 

Undoubtedly  Forster's  article  up  to  the  date 
of  its  appearance  was  far  the  most  outspoken 
in  the  praise  which  it  gave.  It  must  have  been 
all  the  more  grateful  to  the  author,  because 
at  that  time  neither  he  nor  his  critic  had  any 
knowledge  of  each  other.  It  was  not,  indeed, 
till  late  in  the  following  December  that  they  met. 
But  the  review  itself  never  had  the  influence 
which  Browning's  friendship  for  its  writer  at- 
tributed to  it,  and  which  later  his  biographers 
have  conceded  to  it  on  his  authority.  It  was 
merely  one  of  several  agencies — the  greatest  of 
which  was  time — that  were  working  in  favor  of 
the  production.  The  article  in  question  took  up 
three  columns  of  T^A^jExawzw^r.  Much  of  it  con- 
sisted of  extracts  from  the  poem  itself,  amount- 
ing in  all  to  about  one  hundred  and  sixty  Hnes. 
Nor  was  it  unmixed  laudation.  It  conceded 
that  some  of  the  passages  were  tedious  and  some 
were  obscure.  But  upon  the  work  as  a  whole  it 
bestow^ed  the  highest  praise.  "Since  the  publi- 
cation of  'Philip  Van  Artevelde,'"   began  the 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  ^7 

review,  "we  have  met  with  no  such  evidence  of 
poetical  genius  and  of  general  intellectual  power 
as  are  contained  in  this  volume."  The  tone  of 
what  followed  coincided  with  the  opening.  "  It 
is  some  time  since  we  read  a  work  of  more  un- 
equivocal power  than  this,"  were  the  words  of  its 
closing  passage.  "We  conclude  that  its  author 
is  a  young  man,  as  we  do  not  recollect  his  having 
published  before.  If  so,  we  may  safely  predict 
for  him  a  brilliant  career,  if  he  continues  true  to 
the  present  promise  of  his  genius.  He  possesses 
all  the  elements  of  a  fine  poet." 

This  is  cordial  and,  what  is  better,  well-de- 
served praise.  But  to  one  familiar  with  the  criti- 
cal literature  of  all  time,  and  in  particular  the 
critical  literature  of  that  time,  it  is  far  from  being 
unexampled.  Essentially  the  same  words  were 
then  used  in  influential  journals  of  works  of 
which  now  the  literary  antiquary  alone  knows. 
But  Forster's  convictions,  like  those  of  many 
others,  were  fortified  by  further  familiarity  with 
the  poem;  and  it  is  not  unreasonable  to  suppose 
that  the  article  of  the  critic  which  Browning 
came  later  to  have  in  mind  was  not  the  one  which 
appeared  in  The  Examiner,  but  the  long  one  of 
twenty  pages  which  about  eight  months  after- 


38  THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 

ward  came  out  in  Colburn's  New  Monthly  Maga- 
zine. ^  It  was  professedly  the  first  number — 
to  which  no  second  ever  succeeded — of  an  article 
entitled  "Evidences  of  a  New  Genius  for  Dra- 
matic Poetry."  The  evidence  of  this  genius,  it 
asserted,  was  the  little  and  scantily  noticed  vol- 
ume of  "Paracelsus."  The  authorship  of  the 
review  was  not  given,  but  was  probably  well 
known.  There  was  no  uncertainty  in  the  utter- 
ance. "Without  the  slightest  hesitation,"  wrote 
Forster,  "we  name  Mr.  Robert  Browning  at  once 
with  Shelley,  Coleridge,  Wordsworth.  He  has 
entitled  himself  to  a  place  among  the  acknowl- 
edged poets  of  the  age." 

The  criticism  was  certainly  as  cordial  as  it 
was  true.  But  long  before  this  article  appeared, 
heartiest  eulogiums  had  been  passed  upon  the 
work.  Fox,  to  whom  it  had  been  shown  in 
manuscript,  was  not  behindhand  in  acknowl- 
edgment both  of  its  promise  and  performance. 
In  The  Monthly  Repository  of  November,  1835, 
he  gave  the  fullest  expression  to  his  admiration. 
His  testimony,  sincere  as  it  evidently  was,  may 
be  thought  to  have  been  influenced  by  a  desire 
to  stand  up  for  one  of  his  own  contributors;  for 

1  For  March,  1836,  vol.  XXXVI,  p.  288. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING 


39 


during  that  year  and  the  preceding,  Browning 
had  pubHshed  in  this  periodical  several  pieces  of 
poetry.  But  no  bias  from  this  source  can  be 
thought  to  have  influenced  Leigh  Hunt,  who  in 
this  same  month  of  November  gave  up  nine  col- 
umns of  his  'Journal  to  a  review  of  the  poem, 
supplemented  by  copious  extracts. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  this  article  was 
the  work  of  the  editor  himself.  "Paracelsus" 
was  highly  praised  in  it,  and,  what  is  better, 
was  sensibly  praised.  Furthermore,  the  review, 
friendly  as  it  assuredly  was,  is  particularly  worthy 
of  attention  for  the  note  of  warning  it  contained 
as  to  the  danger  the  author  was  exposed  to  of  al- 
lowing his  peculiarities  of  style  to  degenerate  into 
a  slovenly  mannerism.  Two  sentences  of  it,  it 
may  be  well  to  quote,  not  merely  for  the  general 
truth  they  convey,  but  for  the  value  of  their 
special  application.  "We  do  not  object,"  wrote 
Hunt,  "to  his  long  and  often  somewhat  intri- 
cately involved  sentences,  or  to  forms  of  phrase- 
ology and  construction  of  occasional  occurrence, 
which  are  apt  for  the  moment  to  perplex  and 
startle  at  the  first  reading;  or  to  any  other  devia- 
tions of  a  similar  kind  from  ordinary  usage  or  the 
beaten  highway  presented  by  our  books  of  author- 


40  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

ity  on  grammar,  rhetoric  or  prosody,  in  so  far 
as  such  unusual  forms  are  the  natural  and  un- 
affected product  of  the  writer's  genius  working 
its  purposes  in  its  own  way.  Such  distinctive 
characteristics,  when  we  have  become  famihar 
with  them,  and  they  have  lost  any  slight  repul- 
siveness  with  which  they  may  at  first  have  acted 
upon  us,  even  acquire  a  power  of  enhancing  the 
pleasure  we  receive  from  a  composition  other- 
wise eminently  beautiful,  and  of  riveting  our  love 
for  it."  jjWhat  Hunt  deprecated  was  the  indul- 
gence in  these  peculiarities  of  expression  when 
there  was  nothing  to  justify  them.  These  words, 
it  seems  to  me,  set  forth  adequately  the  varying 
effects  of  Browning's  poetry.  When  his  genius 
is  at  its  loftiest,  the  peculiarities  of  expression 
enhance  the  attractiveness  of  the  composition 
and  give  it  increased  hold  upon  our  feelings. 
But  there  was  always  the  tendency  to  resort  to 
these  peculiarities  when  there  was  nothing  in  the 
matter  to  sustain  their  weight.  Consequently, 
when  they  were  not  a  positive  excellence,  they 
tended  to  degenerate  into  a  mere  trick  of  expres- 
sion; and  trickery  in  poetry — I  do  not  use  trick- 
ery in  a  bad  sense — carries  with  it  in  the  end  its 
own  death-warrant. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  41 

"Paracelsus"  was  not  Indeed  a  work  to  take 
the  public  by  storm.  For  its  appreciation  it  re- 
quired close  reading  and  reflection.  It  would 
have  been  no  wonder,  therefore,  if  the  weekly 
purveyors  of  hasty  criticism  had  sniffed  at  it 
hesitatingly  or  sneered  at  it  contemptuously, 
though  with  opinions  of  this  latter  sort  it  has  not 
been  my  fortune  to  meet.  Most  frequently,  so 
far  as  I  have  observed,  they  took  the  safe  course 
of  noticing  it  in  that  perfunctory  way  which  is 
adopted  by  the  writer  who  seeks  not  so  much  to 
conceal  his  opinions  as  to  conceal  the  fact  that  he 
has  no  opinions.  But  the  more  fully  men  con- 
sider all  great  work  the  more  fully  does  its  great- 
ness grow  upon  them.  It  was  so  in  the  case  of 
"Paracelsus."  As  time  went  on,  the  notices  the 
poem  received  prove  conclusively  the  increas- 
ing hold  it  was  gaining  over  the  most  thoughtful 
class  of  readers.  No  adventitious  helping  hand 
brought  this  about;  it  was  its  own  inherent  worth. 
I  have  already  asserted  that  Forster's  criticism 
never  had  the  influence  upon  public  opinion 
which  Browning's  friendship  for  the  critic  led 
him  to  attribute  to  it.  In  the  very  month  of 
March  in  which  his  second  and  really  enthusi- 
astic article  appeared  in  the  New  Monthly  Maga- 


42  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

zine,  and  consequently  not  affected  by  it,  came 
out  a  long,  elaborate,  and  cordial  review  of  "  Par- 
acelsus" in  the  then  far  more  influential  Frasers 
Magazine^  under  the  title  of  "Asinarii  Scenici"  * 
The  poem  was  not  only  praised  in  the  highest 
terms,  but  its  superiority  to  Taylor's  "Philip 
Van  Artevelde"  was  distinctly  and  even  some- 
what aggressively  proclaimed;  and  "Philip  Van 
Artevelde"  was  the  one  work  of  that  decade 
which  in  general  critical  estimate  had  attained 
highest  repute. 

I  am  not  picturing  the  success  of  "Paracel- 
sus" as  being  in  the  slightest  degree  overwhelm- 
ing; but  so  far  as  it  went  the  success  was  un- 
equivocal. To  this  there  is  further  evidence 
which  can  hardly  be  gainsaid.  In  1842  Richard 
Hengist  Home  contributed  to  a  quarterly  period- 
ical an  article  on  Browning's  poetry.  ^  Its  value 
as  a  truthful  record  of  the  reception  accorded  to 
this  particular  production  is  founded  on  the  fact 
that  the  review  was  submitted  in  manuscript  to 
the  poet  himself.  Naturally,  Home,  like  most 
men  of  that  time,  looked  upon  "Paracelsus"  as 


iVol.  XIII,  p.  362. 

'  Church  of  England  Quarterly  Review,  October,  1842,  vol.  XII, 
p.  464. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  43 

his  earliest  work.  He  discoursed  upon  the  suc- 
cess which  had  attended  this  supposedly  first  vent- 
ure. The  restrained  way  in  which  he  expresses 
himself  is  evidence  that  he  had  no  disposition 
to  exaggerate  or  lessen  the  nature  or  degree  of  the 
welcome  which  had  waited  upon  the  young  poet. 
"His  reception,"  wrote  Home,  "was  compara- 
tively good;  we  may  say  very  good.  Several  of 
those  periodicals,  in  which  the  critics  seem  dis- 
posed to  regard  poetry  of  a  superior  kind  as  a 
thing  to  be  respected  and  studied,  hailed  the  ap- 
pearance of  Mr.  Robert  Browning  with  all  the 
honors  which  can  reasonably  be  expected  to  be 
awarded  to  a  new-comer,  who  is  moreover  alive. 
In  more  than  one  quarter  the  young  poet  was 
fairly  crowned.  The  less  intelligent  class  of 
critics  spoke  of  him  with  praise;  guarding  their 
expressions  with  an  eye  to  retreat,  if  necessary, 
at  any  future  time,  made  various  extracts,  and 
set  him  to  grow." 

The  passages  just  cited  from  a  notice  which 
had  passed  before  its  publication  under  the  eye 
of  Browning  himself  give  a  view  of  the  recep- 
tion of  his  work  a  good  deal  different  from  that 
for  which  in  certain  instances  the  poet  was  later 
responsible.     There  can  be  no  question  as  to  its 


44  ROBERT  BROWNING 

correctness.  No  volume  of  verse — not  even  ex- 
cepting "Philip  Van  Artevelde" — was  published 
during  the  fourth  decade  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury w^hich  created  a  profounder  impression  than 
did  "  Paracelsus  "  upon  that  body  of  men  who  are 
indeed  limited  in  number,  but  whose  verdict  is 
the  verdict  which  posterity  never  undertakes  to 
set  aside.  It  led  no  slight  proportion  of  the 
choicest  spirits  of  the  time  to  display  at  even 
this  early  period  in  his  career  warmest  recog- 
nition of  what  he  had  already  accomplished  and 
to  look  with  hope  and  expectation  upon  what 
was  reserved  for  him  to  achieve  in  the  future. 
It  is  all-important  to  bring  out  this  fact  sharply, 
because  it  serves  to  explain  the  disappointment 
with  which  high-wrought  anticipation  came  to 
regard  the  works  of  his  which  immediately  suc- 
ceeded, the  retrogression  that  took  place  in  the 
estimate  which  had  begun  to  be  entertained  of 
him  by  the  public,  and  the  long  period  of  neglect 
that  was  to  follow. 


II 

"STRAFFORD"  AND  "SORDELLO" 

Among  the  men  who  had  been  attracted  to 
Browning  by  his  "Paracelsus"  was  the  famous 
actor  Macready.  He  was  introduced  to  its 
author  at  the  house  of  Fox,  late  in  November, 
1835.  Under  date  of  December  7,  he  records  in 
his  diary  that  he  had  read  this  work.  He  was 
profoundly  impressed  by  it.  There  were  oc- 
casional obscurities,  he  conceded;  but  these 
were  more  than  atoned  for  by  the  poetry  of 
thought,  feeling,  and  diction  which  pervaded  it, 
"The  writer,"  he  added,  "can  scarcely  fail  to  be 
a  leading  spirit  of  his  time."  Subsequent  pe- 
rusal strengthened  the  first  conviction.  It "  raises 
my  wonder  the  more  I  read  it,"  he  remarked  in 
an  entry  of  several  months  later. 

The  acquaintance  thus  begun  soon  ripened  in- 
to close  friendship.  From  this  time  on,  up  to 
the  estrangement  which  in  1843  attended  the  pro- 
duction of  "A  Blot  i'  the  'Scutcheon,"  a  good 
deal   of  our   knowledge   of  Browning's   doings 

45 


46  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

come  from  the  references  to  him  in  the  actor's 
diary.  The  intimacy  that  sprang  up  directed 
to  the  drama  the  attention  of  the  young  poet. 
Under  date  of  February  i6,  1836,  Macready  re- 
cords that  he  was  visited  by  Browning  in  com- 
pany with  Forster.  They  had  come  to  talk  with 
him  over  the  plot  of  a  play  which  the  former  had 
in  mind.  The  poet  told  the  actor  that  he  had 
been  hit  by  his  performance  of  Othello,  and  the 
actor  told  the  poet  that  he  hoped  that  blood 
would  come.  The  subject  Browning  was  then 
contemplating  was  Narses,  the  famous  general 
of  Justinian.  But  this  he  gave  up.  On  August 
3,  of  this  same  year,  Macready  tells  us  that  Fors- 
ter had  informed  him  that  Browning  had  settled 
upon  Strafford.  The  subject  chosen  pleased 
him.  "He  could  not  have  hit  upon  one,"  he 
wrote  in  his  diary,  "that  I  could  more  readily 
have  concurred  in." 

It  is  altogether  probable — in  fact,  it  may  be 
said  to  be  certain — that  Browning's  choice  of 
this  subject  was  suggested  by  the  aid  he  had 
been  led  to  give  to  his  friend  Forster  in  his  life  of 
Strafford.  At  that  time  a  series  of  independent 
works  were  coming  out  under  the  general  citle  of 
"The   Cabinet   Cyclopaedia."     For  this   series 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  47 

Forster  had  agreed  to  write  biographies  of  several 
of  the  statesmen  connected  with  the  great  Puri- 
tan revolution  of  the  seventeenth  century.  He 
had  already  completed  the  life  of  Sir  John  Eliot 
which  made  up  the  first  part  of  one  of  the 
contemplated  volumes.  In  it  he  had  again 
shown  his  zeal  for  his  friend.  In  the  text  he 
quoted  three  or  four  lines  of  verse.  They  were 
taken,  he  said,  from  "the  poet  whose  genius 
has  just  risen  amongst  us."  Then  a  note  was 
appended  clearly  for  the  purpose  of  celebrating 
the  writer  of  the  extract.  After  giving  the  name 
of  the  author  of  "Paracelsus"  as  the  poet  al- 
luded to,  he  went  on  to  say  that  "there  would 
be  little  danger  in  predicting  that  this  writer 
will  soon  be  acknowledged  as  a  first-rate  poet. 
He  has  already  proved  himself  one."  ^ 

The  life  of  Eliot  with  that  of  Strafford  was  to 
constitute  a  single  volume.  For  this  second 
biography  Forster  had  already  made  a  collection 
of  materials  and  had  begun  its  composition. 
Then  he  fell  ill.  The  book  had  been  promised 
for  a  certain  date;  to  finish  it  at  the  time  spec- 
ified was  impracticable.  Naturally  Forster  was 
in  a  despondent  state  of  mind.     In  this  condition 

^  "Eminent  British  Statesmen,"  vol.  II,  p.  104,  London,  1836. 


THE  EARLY  LITER^iRY   CAREER 


Browning  found  him.  He  came  at  once  to  the 
rescue  of  his  friend  and  volunteered  to  do  the 
work.  The  offer  was  accepted.  Browning  ac- 
cordingly took  the  materials  which  Forster  had 
gathered  together  and  proceeded  to  complete  the 
life.  In  1836  the  volume  containing  the  two 
biographies  appeared,  but  with  no  hint  that 
any  one  save  he  whose  name  was  on  the  title- 
page  had  anything  whatever  to  do  with  the 
production  of  the  second  one. 

The  secret  of  Browning's  share  in  the  prepar- 
ation of  the  biography  was  not  revealed  until 
some  years  after  its  supposedly  sole  author  was 
dead.  The  Browning  Society  came  upon  it  in 
the  course  of  their  probings  into  all  the  mysteries 
connected  with  the  poet's  career.  In  1892  it 
brought  out  that  part  of  the  volume  which  con- 
tained the  life  of  Strafford  as  being  mainly  the 
composition  of  the  poet.  The  facts  which  have 
just  been  given  have  been  largely  taken  from  the 
preface  to  this  reprint.  These  have  been  ques- 
tioned by  some;  by  others  they  have  been  strenu- 
ously denied.  Precisely  how  much  of  the  com- 
position of  the  work  was  Browning's  own  may 
never  be  exactly  ascertained.  But  that  he  had 
nothing  to  do  with  it  requires  ignorance  to  assert 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  49 

or  to  accept.  Internal  evidence  is  sufficient  of 
itself  to  make  clear  his  participation  in  the  un- 
dertaking. But  with  this  we  do  not  have  to  con- 
tent ourselves.  Those  who  deny  the  poet  any 
share  in  the  production  must  be  prepared  to  at- 
tack his  veracity.  Clearly  it  was  a  belief  of  his 
own  that  he  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  it.  Such 
was  the  impression  he  conveyed  to  his  future 
wife  as  the  correspondence  between  them  proves 
conclusively.  ^ 

Having  chosen  Strafford  as  the  subject  of  his 
drama,  Browning  worked  at  it  diligently.  Be- 
fore the  close  of  the  year  1836  he  had  finished  it 
and  given  it  to  Macready.  At  first  the  actor  was 
disposed  to  look  with  distinct  favor  upon  the 
play.  His  own  attitude  of  approval  extended  to 
Osbaldistone,  the  manager  of  the  theater,  to 
whom  it  was  read  on  March  30,  1837.  He  was 
wiUing  to  produce  it  without  delay.  The  ex- 
pectations of  its  continuous  popularity  that  pre- 
vailed can  be  inferred  from  the  terms  he  offered. 
He  agreed  "to  give  the  author  £\2  per  night  for 
twenty-five  nights,  and  ;^io  per  night  for  ten 

'  See  in  particular  in  the  correspondence  of  Browning  and  Miss 
Barrett  the  letter  of  Miss  Barrett  dated  May  26,  1846,  vol.  II, 
p.  183;  of  May  30,  ih.,  p.  190,  and  of  June  6,  ib.,  p.  284. 


50  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

nights  beyond."  So  far  everything  was  favor- 
able. But  the  more  Macready  studied  the  play, 
the  less  confidence  he  felt  in  its  excellence  for 
stage  representation.  It  became  clear  to  him, 
as  time  went  on,  that  nothing  could  save  it  but 
the  acting.  That  this  might  possibly  carry  it  to 
the  end  without  disapprobation  was  the  far  from 
glowing  anticipation  of  success  he  set  down  in 
his  diary  before  the  piece  was  performed.  In  the 
comments  he  made  there  upon  the  play  he  in- 
cidentally brings  out  with  distinctness  the  funda- 
mental difference  between  the  methods  adopted 
by  Browning  and  the  treatment  of  a  similar  sub- 
ject for  stage  purposes  by  the  supreme  English 
dramatist.  "In  all  the  historical  plays  of 
Shakespeare,"  he  observes,  "the  great  poet  has 
only  introduced  such  events  as  act  on  the  indi- 
viduals concerned,  and  of  which  they  are  them- 
selves a  part;  the  persons  are  all  in  direct  relation 
to  each  other,  and  the  facts  are  present  to  the 
audience.  But  in  Browning's  play  we  have  a 
long  scene  of  passion — upon  what .?  A  plan  des- 
troyed, by  whom  or  for  what  we  know  not,  and 
a  parliament  dissolved,  which  merely  seems  to 
inconvenience  Strafixtrd  in  his  arrangements."  ^ 

*  Diary,  April  28,  1837. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  51 

Macready's  fears  were  realized.  Only  the 
acting  could  save  it,  he  thought,  and  the  acting 
did  not  save  it.  The  characters  of  Strafford  and 
Lady  Carhsle  were  taken  respectively  by  him  and 
Helen  Faucit.  The  combination  of  these  two, 
it  might  seem,  would  suffice  to  score  a  triumph 
for  almost  any  play.  Without  their  support 
"Strafford"  would  assuredly  have  been  the  com- 
pletest  of  failures.  But  even  with  their  support 
it  was  far  from  being  a  success.  It  was  chosen 
by  Macready  for  his  benefit,  and  naturally  there 
was  that  night  a  full  house.  He  seems  to  have 
made  the  most  that  could  be  made  of  his  part. 
Browning  himself  was  more  than  satisfied.  He 
assured  the  actor  after  the  rehearsal  that  it  was 
to  him  "a  full  recompense  for  having  written  the 
play,  inasmuch  as  he  had  seen  his  utmost  hopes 
of  character  perfectly  embodied."  ^ 

It  was  well  that  the  poet  had  this  feeling;  for 
it  was  the  principal  recompense  he  received. 
The  twenty-five  nights  of  performances,  for 
which  the  manager  had  agreed  to  pay  twelve 
poun<ls  each,  dwindled  to  a  mere  fraction  of  the 
hoped-for  number.  At  the  end  of  the  fifth  per- 
formance the  play  was  withdrawn.     The  osten- 

*  Macready's  Diary,  May  i,  1837. 


52  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

sible  reason  given  was  the  secession  of  Vanden- 
hoff  who  took  the  part  of  Pym.  Manifestly  this 
was  but  a  pretext.  It  is  idle  to  maintain  that  the 
withdrawal  of  a  single  minor  actor,  however 
important,  could  have  led  to  the  removal  from 
the  boards  of  a  play,  for  the  continuance  of  which 
there  was  a  demand  on  the  part  of  the  public; 
especially  as  another  stood  ready  at  the  time  to 
take  his  place. 

The  little  success  of  the  piece  Browning  at  a 
later  period  ascribed  to  the  poor  performance  of 
the  minor  actors.  On  this  point  there  was  the 
usual  diversity  of  views  expressed  at  the  time. 
It  is  clear  that  for  these  subordinates — most  of 
whom  held  respectable,  even  if  not  high  position, 
on  the  stage — the  play  had  not  the  slightest  in- 
terest. It  could  hardly  be  expected  therefore 
that  they  could  make  it  interesting  to  others. 
The  view  taken  of  them  by  Browning  does  not 
seem  to  be  different  from  that  of  several  con- 
temporary critics  who,  while  praising  unreserv- 
edly Macready  and  Helen  Faucit,  speak  of  the 
performance  of  some  of  the  other  actors  as 
wretched,  where  it  was  not  abominable.  Forster 
especially   raged    furiously   in  The  Examiner.  ^ 

»No.  1527,  p.  294,  May  7,  1837. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  53 


**Mr.  Vandenhoff,"  he  wrote,  "was  particularly 
nauseous  with  his  whining,  drawling,  and  slouch- 
ing in  Pym;  and  Mr.  Webster  whimpered  in 
somewhat  too  juvenile  a  fashion  through  Young 
Vane.  Some  one  should  have  stepped  out  from 
the  pit  and  thrust  Mr.  Dale  from  the  stage." 
This  last-named  actor  was  the  one  who  took  the 
part  of  the  king.  There  is  assuredly  no  question 
that  drastic  treatment  of  the  kind  recommended 
in  his  case  wo>uld  have  added  to  the  interest  of 
the  particular  performance,  whatever  might  have 
been  its  effect  upon  the  permanent  fortunes  of 
the  play. 

Forster  was  indeed  the  one  leading  critic  who 
remained  faithful  to  this  drama  while  it  was  alive 
and  praised  it  after  it  was  dead.  "Strafford" 
he  said  in  The  Examiner  of  the  week  following, 
"was  winning  its  way  into  greater  success  than 
we  had  hoped  for  it,  buf  Mr.  Vandenhoff's  seces- 
sion from  the  stage  has  caused  its  temporary 
withdrawal.  It  will  be  only  temporary,  we  trust; 
no  less  in  justice  to  the  great  genius  of  the  author 
than  to  the  fervid  applause  with  which  its  last 
performance  was  received  by  an  admirably  filled 
house."  His  opinion  of  the  favor  it  had  won 
could  hardly  have  been  that  of  those  who,  out- 


54  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

side  of  the  author,  were  most  interested  in  its 
success.  Macready's  view  of  the  situation  we 
have  no  means  of  knowing  definitely;  for  be- 
yond the  record  of  its  initial  performance,  no 
later  reference  to  the  play,  no  criticism  of  it, 
has  been  permitted  to  appear  in  his  diary  as 
published.  But  his  real  opinion  of  it  can  be  in- 
ferred from  his  action.  He  made  no  attempt  to 
revive  it  that  season,  as  Forster  had  hoped, 
though  his  then  intimate  friendship  with  the 
author  would  have  led  him  to  take  such  a  course, 
had  he  shared  in  the  sentiments  of  the  critic  about 
its  prospects  of  success.  The  temporary  with- 
drawal of  "Strafford"  became,  indeed,  eternal. 
During  his  many  years  of  acting  that  followed, 
Macready  never  brought  it  again  upon  the  stage. 
All  contemporary  accounts  are  practically 
unanimous  in  the  view  that  "Strafford"  was  a 
failure.  Even  Forster,  who  put  the  best  possible 
face  upon  the  matter,  conceded  that  it  would  not 
take  permanent  hold  upon  the  stage.  It  is  idle 
to  pretend  that  this  agreement  ofopinion  was  due 
to  any  hostility  on  the  part  of  the  critics.  So 
little  was  there  of  this  feeling  that  almost  every- 
where a  genuine  desire  existed  that  the  play 
should  succeed.     There  is  in  truth  a  tone  of  re- 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  55 

gretful  disappointment  in  several  of  the  notices 
which  it  received.  The  critics  came  prepared  to 
praise;  they  wanted  to  praise;  nothing  but  their 
greater  or  less  conscientiousness  stood  in  the  way 
of  their  praising.  This  desire  of  seeing  the 
tragedy  successful  was  mainly  due  to  the  steadily 
growing  partiality  in  Browning's  favor  which  had 
been  produced  by  "Paracelsus"  upon  the  more 
cultivated  class  of  minds.  No  one  can  read 
many  of  the  contemporary  notices  of  the  per- 
formance of  "  Strafford"  without  becoming  aware 
of  how  high  was  the  anticipation  of  it  raised  by 
the  previous  work,  and  how  keen  was  the  dis- 
appointment that  its  author  had  in  this  later  one 
failed  to  come  up  to  the  expectation  entertained. 
The  conviction,  however,  was  general  that  in- 
stead of  showing  an  advance  in  achievement  it 
indicated  decided  retrogression. 

There  is  an  account  of  the  performance  of  the 
opening  night  in  the  autobiography  of  the  con- 
temporary artist  and  poet,  William  Bell  Scott. 
It  occurs  incidentally  in  his  mention  of  Leigh 
Hunt.  **0n  the  first  interview,  I  think,  it  was," 
he  wrote,  "he  told  me  of  Browning's  play  of 
'Strafford'  being  placed  on  the  stage.  This  was 
on  the  first  of  May,  1837.     My  admiration  for 


56  THE  EARLY   LITERARY   CAREER 

'Paracelsus' was  so  great  I  determined  to  go  and 
applaud  without  rhyme  or  reason;  and  so  I  did, 
in  front  of  the  pit.  From  the  first  scene  it  be- 
came plain  that  applause  was  not  the  order. 
The  speakers  had  every  one  of  them  orations 
to  deliver,  and  no  action  of  any  kind  to  perform. 
The  scene  changed,  another  door  opened,  and 
another  half-dozen  gentlemen  entered  as  long- 
winded  as  the  last.  Still,  I  kept  applauding  with 
some  few  others,  till  the  howling  was  too  over- 
powering and  the  disturbance  so  considerable 
that  for  a  few  minutes  I  lost  my  hat.  The  truth 
was  that  the  talk  was  too  much  the  same  and 
too  much  in  quantity;  it  was  no  use  continuing 
to  hope  something  would  turn  up  to  surprise  the 
house."  ^ 

Apparently  this  is  an  exaggerated  account  of 
the  ill  success  which  attended  the  performance  of 
the  play  on  the  opening  night.  But  the  motives 
given  by  the  writer  for  going  is  another  of  the 
many  proofs  of  the  high  position  which  his  pre- 
vious work  had  already  given  Browning.  It 
shows,  too,  how  much  that  poem  had  done  and 
was  doing  for  his  reputation  that  the  play  of 
*'StrafFord"  was  published  before  it  was  performed 

'William  Bell  Scott's  "Autobiographic  Notes,"  vol.  I,  p.  124. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  57 

as  being  "by  the  author  of  'Paracelsus.'"  It 
came  out  at  the  end  of  April.  Furthermore,  it 
was  thought  worthy  of  being  made  the  subject 
of  a  generally  favorable  criticism  in  the  Edin- 
burgh Review.  To  us  at  this  day  the  article 
which  then  appeared  furnishes  somewhat  amus- 
ing reading,  for  it  attributes  to  alterations  made 
by  Macready,  and  not  to  the  poet  himself,  the 
abrupt  transitions,  the  disjointed  sentences,  the 
conveyance  of  meaning  by  starts  and  jerks, 
which  we  all  recognize  now  as  peculiar  character- 
istics of  Browning's  style.  But  the  very  fact 
that  the  Scottish  quarterly  thought  it  worth  while 
to  review  the  drama  meant  then  a  great  deal 
more  than  we  conceive  of  now.  That  stately 
periodical,  though  shorn  of  much  of  its  influence, 
still  retained  something  of  the  glamour  of  its 
original  dignity.  It  occasionally  took  up  some 
really  or  presumably  inferior  work  for  the  sake 
of  scoring  it;  but  in  the  way  of  praise,  it  had  too 
much  regard  for  its  position  to  take  serious  notice 
of  any  new  writer  who  was  not  regarded  as  of 
great  promise  or  of  any  work  which  was  not  in 
some  way  deemed  of  distinct  importance.  It 
was  years  after  this  before  it  condescended  to  re- 
view Tennyson  at  all.     Even  then  the  writer  of 


S8  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

the  article  was  cautioned  against  going  so  far  as 
to  commit  the  periodical  by  the  bestowal  of  too 
much    praise. 

It  is  to  be  kept  in  mind  that  we  have  been  dis- 
cussing the  play  here  not  as  a  specimen  of  Eng- 
lish literature,  but  as  a  contribution  to  the  acting 
drama.  Yet  in  the  former  capacity  it  is  no  more 
a  success  than  it  was  in  the  latter.  On  the  stage, 
Macready  and  Helen  Faucit  could  not  keep  it 
from  being  a  failure.  It  is  equally  a  failure  in 
the  closet.  As  the  men  concerned  in  the  per- 
formance of  it  did  not  find  it  interesting,  so  did 
not  those  who  set  out  to  read  it.  The  inability 
has  continued.  The  enjoyment  of  its  perusal  is 
confined  mainly  to  those  devotees  of  the  poet 
whose  cardinal  principle  is  apparently  to  admire 
that  portion  of  his  production  which  the  rest  of 
the  world  deems  unendurable.  Men  read  it 
now,  so  far  as  they  read  it  at  all,  from  a  sense 
of  duty;  they  do  not  read  it  for  pleasure.  The 
main  difficulty  with  it  is  its  utter  lack  of  interest. 
We  care  little  for  the  characters  in  the  tragedy  or 
the  fate  that  befalls  them.  Several  of  them  are 
little  more  than  lay-figures  with  names  attached 
to  them;  and  one  could  frequently  be  substi- 
tuted for  the  other  and  neither  hearer  nor  reader 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING 


59 


would  be  conscious  of  any  impropriety.  Straf- 
ford's devotion  to  the  king  who  deserts  him  ex- 
cites little  respect.  In  one  of  his  character  it 
lacks  dignity;  for  it  is  not  the  attitude  of  a  man 
which  is  portrayed,  but  that  of  a  woman  whose 
conduct  is  under  the  control  of  her  feelings.  The 
love  part  furnished  by  Lady  Carlisle  is  insignifi- 
cant; but  insignificant  as  it  is,  it  is  too  much.  It 
appeals  as  little  to  the  audience  to  whom  it  is  re- 
vealed as  it  does  to  the  one  person  of  the  drama 
from  whom  it  is  carefully  kept;  and  so  long  as 
it  is  kept  from  him,  it  had  no  business  to  be  in 
the  play  at  all. 

"  Strafford"  has,  however,  a  certain  importance 
in  Browning's  literary  career,  not  because  of  the 
importance  it  has  in  itself,  but  because  it  marks 
his  entrance  into  dramatic  composition.  The 
plays  he  wrote  during  his  life  were  seven.  From 
the  number  specified  are  intentionally  excluded 
"Pippa  Passes"  and  "In  a  Balcony,"  which  are 
dramatic  dialogues  and  not  dramas  proper.  All 
of  these  seven  belong  to  the  earlier  period  of  his 
career  which  is  here  under  consideration;  only 
three  of  them  have  ever  been  brought  out  upon 
the  regular  stage.  Accordingly  it  may  be  well  to 
consider  at  this  point  the  poet's  position  as  a 


6o  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

dramatist.  For  his  rank  in  that  class  the  most 
extravagant  claims  have  been  advanced,  espe- 
cially of  late  years.  More  than  once  we  have 
been  assured  that  he  is  the  greatest  of  English 
dramatists  since  Shakespeare.  However  opin- 
ions may  differ  on  that  point,  all  will  agree 
that  there  is  one  respect  in  which  his  fortunes 
bear  no  striking  resemblance  to  those  of  the  great 
Elizabethan.  Contemporary  evidence  is  ample 
to  show  that  Shakespeare  was  the  most  popular 
playwright  of  his  time.  His  plays  held  the  stage 
then;  they  have  continued  to  hold  it  ever  since. 

The  modern  advocates  of  Browning  as  a  great 
dramatic  poet  do  not  venture  to  maintain  that 
either  of  these  facts  is  true  of  the  plays  of  his 
that  have  been  produced  on  the  stage.  Instead 
they  content  themselves  with  insisting  that  on 
their  first  representation  they  did  as  well  as  the 
average;  that  it  was  due  to  unforeseen  and  un- 
expected agencies  that  they  did  not  gain  at  the 
time  the  full  meed  of  popular  favor;  and,  further- 
more, the  reports  that  they  actually  failed  were 
and  are  malicious  misstatements.  They  have 
this  justification  for  what  they  say  of  this  sort 
that  the  belief  they  express  is  based  largely  upon 
utterances  of  Browning  himself,  when  in  later 


OF   ROBERT   BROWNING  6i 

life  a  treacherous  memory  led  him  to  put  forth 
some  remarkable  statements  about  his  plays, 
which  bear  but  a  remote  resemblance  to  the 
truth.  But  even  were  we  to  concede  the  correct- 
ness of  the  attempts  to  explain  the  lack  of  success 
of  these  pieces  in  the  past,  they  do  not  account  for 
the  fact  that  they  do  not  hold  the  stage  in  the 
present,  and  that  they  give  no  sign  of  holding  it 
in  the  future.  They  may  be  acted  at  intervals. 
Through  adventitious  circumstances  they  may 
occasionally  perhaps  meet  with  a  sort  of  quali- 
fied favor.  But  no  popular  demand  exists  for 
them.  When  announced  the  interest  they  arouse 
is  that  of  curiosity  or  partisanship.  This  is 
amply  sufficient  to  explain  whatever  success 
Helen  Faucit  had  with  "Colombe's  Birthday,"  in 
1853,  or  Lawrence  Barrett  with  ''A  Blot  i'  the 
'Scutcheon,"  in  the  season  of  1884-85. 
X  The  truth  is  that  so  far  from  being  a  great 
dramatist,  second  only  to  Shakespeare,  Browning, 
in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word,  is  no  dramatist  at 
all.  No  great  poet  who  has  set  out  to  write  plays 
has  failed  more  signally  than  he  in  mastering  the 
technique  of  the  art.  None  has  shown  so  little 
comprehension  of  those  details  of  expression, 
construction,  and   arrangement  which   unite   to 


62  THE  EARLY   LITERARY   CAREER 

make  a  play  successful  on  the  stage.  Nor  was 
he  in  the  slightest  degree  inclined  to  defer  to  the 
opinions  of  those  who  knew  from  practical  ex- 
perience the  methods  best  calculated  to  appeal 
to  an  audience.  His  dramas  throughout  exhibit 
vital  defects  as  acting  plays.  They  lack  organic 
unity  and  order,  and  what  we  may  call  inevitable 
development.  What  is  further  unsatisfactory  in 
them  is  the  utter  inadequacy  of  their  portrayal 
of  human  nature,  and  too  frequently  their  un- 
faithfulness to  it.  But,  so  far  as  the  average^ 
theater-goer  is  concerned,  worse  than  anything 
else,  is  their  lack  of  sustained  interest.  Power- 
ful passages  appear  in  them;  but  no  play  can  be 
kept  alive  merely  by  powerful  passages.  Above 
all,  so  far  as  regards  representation,  the  impos- 
sibility of  comprehending  the  conversation  and 
consequently  of  following  the  course  of  what  little 
action  there  is,  without  effort  which  must  occa- 
sionally be  almost  agonizing  in  its  intensity, — 
this  of  itself  will  always  make  them  failures  up- 
on the  stage. 
^  I  am  doing  no  injustice  to  Browning  in  say- 
ing— for  more  than  once  he  practically  intimated 
it  himself — that  in  his  writing  he  went  upon  the 
theory  that  the  reader  has  no  rights  which  the 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  63 

author  is  bound  to  respect.  It  was  the  business 
of  the  former  to  comprehend.  No  duty  rested 
upon  the  latter  to  make  himself  comprehensible, 
at  least  easily  comprehensible.  This  naturally 
did  not  lead  to  his  ready  or  cordial  acceptance  by 
the  public.  But  if  such  was  his  attitude  toward 
the  reader,  who  has  leisure  to  turn  back,  to  com- 
pare and  to  reflect,  we  can  imagine  what  would 
be  the  result  in  the  case  of  the  hearer  who  must 
catch  at  once  the  meaning  of  what  is  uttered, 
whose  attention  must  be  so  constantly  directed 
to  what  is  said  and  done  at  the  moment  that 
neither  time  nor  opportunity  is  afforded  to  con- 
sider what  has  gone  before.  There  is,  indeed, 
no  great  play  in  which  at  the  first  hearing,  as  at 
the  first  reading,  something  will  not  be  found  to 
have  escaped  the  attention  of  the  most  observant. 
There  will  be  sentences  of  which  he  will  not 
get  the  exact  purport.  But  in  the  case  of  the 
genuine  dramatist  these  occasional  failures  to 
comprehend  the  full  meaning  of  particular  lines 
do  not  interfere  with  the  comprehension  of  the 
work  as  a  whole  or  even  of  any  of  its  details. 
The  broad  general  effects  will  be  as  perceptible  at 
the  first  hearing  as  they  will  be  at  the  hundredth. 
That  this  should  be  so  is  a  necessary  require- 


64  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

ment  for  success.  But  so  little  was  this  elemen- 
tary consideration  heeded  by  Browning,  so  little 
did  he  try  to  conform  to  it,  that  often  a  new  sen- 
tence demanded  the  attention  of  the  hearer  be- 
k  fore  he  had  fully  mastered  the  purport  of  the  one 
it  succeeded.  To  such  an  extent  was  this  car- 
ried that  one  of  the  critics  of  the  first  perform- 
ance of  "  Strafford,"  who  though  not  favorable 
was  by  no  means  disposed  to  be  censorious, 
discovered,  as  he  tells  us,  that  "the  best  way  of 
obtaining  an  impression  of  what  was  going  on 
was  to  take  care  not  to  follow  the  speech  too 
closely,  but  to  hear  the  opening  of  a  sentence 
and  supply  the  remainder  by  imagination."  ^ 

It  is  no  marvel  therefore  that  Browning's  plays 
did  not  succeed.  They  are  often  hard  to  follow 
in  the  closet;  on  the  stage  it  is  impossible  to  fol- 
low them.  The  truth  is  that  his  forte  did  not  lie 
at  all  in  the  drama.  It  is  in  dramatic  monologue 
alone  that  he  achieved  success.  In  that  he  has 
no  superior  in  our  literature;  we  may  almost  say 
he  has  no  equal.  But  the  dramatic  monologue 
is  only  allied  to  the  drama;  it  is  not  the  drama 
itself.  It  is  confined  to  the  revelation  exhibited 
in  pure  soliloquy,  or  to  soliloquy  broken  only  by 

^  Athena-um,  May  6,  1837,  p.  331. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  65 

occasional  interrogation.  Without  speaking  of 
any  other  of  its  various  failures  to  nieet  the  re- 
quirements of  stage  representation,  it  excludes 
action  entirely.  But  action  is  a  cardinal  dis- 
tinction of  the  drama  proper:  it  is  essential  to  its 
very  existence.  Herein  Browning  failed  com- 
pletely. The  characters  in  his  plays  are  as  a 
rule  so  much  taken  up  with  talking  about  every- 
thing in  general  that  they  have  hardly  leisure  left 
to  do  anything  in  particular.  They  discuss  their 
feelings  instead  of  being  inspired  by  them;  and 
in  discussing  them  they  forget  the  hearer  who  is 
waiting  for  something  to  happen.  The  born 
dramatist,  like  the  orator,  has  his  eye  always  up- 
on the  audience.  This  was  the  particular  class 
of  persons  from  whom  Browning  kept  his  eyes 
steadily  averted.  His  plays  therefore  are  to  be 
read  and  studied;  they  are  not  to  be  witnessed. 
Not  one  of  them  complies  with  the  canons  of 
effective  stage  representation.  In  order  to  rank 
him  in  this  class  of  writers,  his  partisans  have  to 
invent  a  distinction  between  dramatic  authors 
and  playwrights  which  seems  based  upon  the 
theory  that  a  genuine  dramatic  author  can  not 
produce  a  play  which  an  ordinary  audience  can 
endure. 


66  THE  EARLY   LITERARY   CAREER 

But  the  belief  that  Browning  is  a  great  drama- 
tist, that  it  is  a  distinct  mark  of  highest  cultiva- 
tion to  enjoy  the  performance  of  his  plays  has 
now  become  with  many  a  faith  which  must  be 
lived  for,  and  if  necessary  be  died  for.  The  in- 
tensity of  this  feeling  can  be  gaged  by  the  fact 
that  it  sometimes  survives  the  actual  experience 
of  seeing  them  acted.  It  is  the  proud  boast  of 
his  extremest  partisans  that  his  dramatic  writ- 
ings do  not  appeal  to  the  multitude.  Hence, 
there  is  little  opportunity  for  even  the  elect  to 
witness  their  representation  save  by  being  per- 
mitted to  share  in  the  intellectual  feasts  of  this 
sort  which  are  occasionally  provided  in  the  pri- 
vate retreats  of  his  special  admirers.  At  times 
in  our  lives  most  of  us  are  called  upon  to  partici- 
pate in  gatherings  of  various  kinds  whose  pro- 
fessed aim  is  to  improve  the  individual  and  to 
elevate  humanity  as  a  whole.  Very  rarely  do 
such  gatherings  conduce  to  hilarity.  But  among 
the  countless  entertainments  of  this  sort  which 
are  apparently  devised  to  impart  additional 
gloom  to  life,  there  seems  to  me  nothing  quite 
so  depressing  as  the  performance  of  a  Browning 
play  by  amateurs.  Actor  and  auditor  alike  come 
to  the  sacrifice  weighed  down  with  a  sense  of  re- 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  67 

sponsibility  for  the  success  of  this  mission  of  do- 
ing and  suffering.  Especially  on  the  faces  of  the 
hearers  assembled  can  be  seen  that  look  of  min- 
gled resolution  and  resignation  which  almost 
defiantly  proclaims  the  fixed  determination, 
come  what  may,  to  be  uplifted  and  inspired. 
True  it  is,  frivolous  and  light-minded  persons 
may  be  found  who  attend  merely  to  see  and  to  be 
seen.  But  the  frivolity  and  gayety  of  these  in- 
truders make  no  head-way  against  the  all-per- 
vading seriousness  of  those  who  have  assembled 
to  bear  aloft  the  gonfalon  of  culture  pure  and  un- 
defiled.  The  most  scoffing  spectator  comes 
soon  to  feel  that  he  is  assisting  at  a  solemn  rite,  in 
which  the  hierophants  interpret  to  the  worship- 
pers the  message  to  his  generation — to  use  the 
now  conventional  phrase — which  Browning  has 
delivered.  It  is  fair  to  say,  however,  that  the 
ceremonial,  dispiriting  as  it  may  be,  is  attended 
with  none  of  the  repulsive  features  v^hich  are  apt 
to  characterize  all  other  forms  of  human  sacri- 
fice; for  the  victims  not  only  welcome  their 
martyrdom  but  are  transported  with  the  joy  of 
being  immolated.  The  chastened  but  exalted 
mood  in  which  they  receive  the  message  may 
perhaps  be  best  indicated  in  the  words  of  a  fem- 


68  THE  EARLY   LITERARY   CAREER 

inine  enthusiast,  who,  in  a  burst  of  confidence 
after  one  of  these  trying  ordeals,  said  to  me  as  a 
supposed  devotee,  "If  we  did  not  know  how 
splendid  this  whole  thing  is,  what  a  horrible  bore 
we  should  think  it  to  be." 

To  mark  distinctly  the  contrast  between  a  great 
poet  and  a  great  poet  who  is  also  a  great  play- 
wright, nothing  can  be  supplied  more  convincing 
than  a  comparison  of  "Luria"  with  "Othello" 
Nothing  more  clearly  reveals  the  limitations  of 
the  modern  author  and  his  lack  of  insight  into 
the  nature  of  successful  stage  representation. 
In  writing  this  tragedy,  Browning  had  before  his 
eyes  the  corresponding  work  of  Shakespeare. 
His  Luria,  as  he  phrased  it  himself,  belongs  to 
Othello's  country.  The  leading  characters  of 
both  plays  are  Moors — Aloors,  too,  of  highest 
intellectual  and  moral  endowment,  simple- 
hearted,  unskilled  in  craft,  doing  everything  in 
honor.  Both,  too,  are  in  the  service  of  Italian 
states.  Both  finally  commit  suicide.  There 
the  resemblance  ceases  between  the  plays.  In 
the  one  action  hurries  on  from  beginning  to  end; 
in  the  other  action  stands  still  while  declamation 
rages  unchecked.  Outof  several  characteristics  of 
"Luria,"one  may  be  worth  pointing  out  because 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  69 

it  vitally  concerns  the  interest  of  the  play  for  rep- 
resentation before  an  English  audience.  Hardly 
a  personage  in  it  contents  himself  with  making  a 
serious  speech  of  less  than  a  dozen  lines,  while 
most  of  them  need  three  or  four  times  that  num- 
ber to  express  themselves  satisfactorily.  The 
play  accordingly  is  not  made  up  of  dialogues  but 
of  a  succession  of  monologues. 

The  lack  of  the  instinct  for  dramatic  propriety 
reaches,  however,  far  deeper  than  neglect  of 
characteristics  which  go  to  render  a  play  success- 
ful upon  the  stage.  Othello  is  acted  upon  by  in- 
fluences we  all  recognize;  he  exhibits  feelings 
with  which  we  all  sympathize,  and  the  deed 
which  ends  his  life  is  to  us  a  natural  solution  of 
the  difficulties  into  which  he  has  been  betrayed. 
In  Browning's  play  it  requires  protracted  thought 
to  perceive  any  reason  for  the  behavior  of  the 
characters;  and  Luria  himself  finally  commits 
suicide  without  other  justification  for  so  doing 
save  that  he,  while  acting  with  perfect  loyalty, 
is  distrusted  by  the  city  which  employs  him. 
Browning's  future  wife,  whose  critical  acumen 
was  as  much  superior  to  her  husband's  as  her 
creative  power  was  inferior,  naturally  objected 
to  this  way  of  disposing  of  the  protagonist  of  his 


70  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

drama.  It  struck  her  as  ignoble  and  unheroical. 
It  is  curious  to  read  Browning's  own  explanation 
of  the  reasons  that  led  him  to  resort  to  the  cheap 
expedient  of  suicide — a  device,  it  may  be  added, 
to  which  he  was  always  too  much  addicted  for 
getting  rid  of  his  characters.  It  was  a  very  just 
objection  which  Macready  made  to  the  ending 
of  "  A  Blot  i'  the  'Scutcheon."  "  Observe  only," 
the  poet  wrote,  "that  Luria  would  stand,  if  I 
have  plied  him  effectually  with  adverse  influ- 
ences, in  such  a  position  as  to  render  any  other 
end  impossible  without  hurt  to  Florence,  which 
his  religion  is  to  avoid  inflicting — passively 
awaiting,  for  instance,  the  sentence  and  punish- 
ment to  come  at  night,  would  as  surely  inflict  it 
as  taking  part  with  her  foes.  His  aim  is  to  pre- 
vent the  harm  she  will  do  herself  by  striking  him, 
so  he  moves  aside  from  the  blow." 

Contrast  Luria's  motives  for  the  final  act  as 
set  forth  by  Browning  with  those  indicated  by 
the  great  dramatist  for  a  similar  ending.  In  the 
case  of  Othello,  there  is  scarcely  anything  else 
left  for  him  to  do.  His  life  has  centred  itself 
in  his  love  for  Desdemona.  The  belief  in  her 
revolt,  which  his  simple  nature  has  been  worked 
upon  to  accept,  causes  him  to  care  no  more  for 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  71 

what  has  been  to  him  Hfe's  supremest  joy.  The 
supposed  knowledge  of  her  unfaithfulness  leads 
him  to  destroy  the  one  being  whom  he  finds  out 
too  late  to  have  been  his  own  in  thought  and 
heart  and  deed.  When  he  comes  to  learn  the 
real  truth,  it  is  not  loss  of  honor  which  afflicts 
him;  it  is  not  the  attitude  of  Venice  toward 
himself  that  disturbs  him.  It  is  that  through 
his  own  credulous  and  unreasoning  suspicion 
everything  has  gone  which  for  him  has  made  life 
worth  living.  To  take  himself  out  of  it  seems 
the  natural  and  only  solution  of  the  difficulties 
with  which  he  finds  himself  environed,  the  only 
mode  of  relief  from  the  agony  he  endures,  the 
only  possible  expiation  he  can  make  for  the  crime 
he  has  committed.  We  are  therefore  not  as- 
tounded by  his  act  because  daily  we  see  similar 
conditions  followed  by  the  same  result. 

But  in  the  case  of  Luria,  the  reason  given  for 
suicide  is  more  than  inadequate;  it  is  almost  en- 
titled to  be  termed  ridiculous.  Why  does  he 
destroy  himself  .f'  He  has  served  the  state  with 
absolute  fidelity.  Though  watched  by  its  jeal- 
ous spies,  he  has  resisted  all  inducements  to 
avenge  himself  for  the  imputations  cast  upon 
his  loyalty  and  honor.     Yet  his  devotion  can  not 


72  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

ward  off  the  desire  to  strike  him,  if  it  can  ward 
off  the  attempt  itself.  So,  as  Browning  expresses 
it,  he  moves  aside  from  the  blow.  The  moving 
aside  from  it  is  a  delicate  way  of  saying  that  he 
proceeds  to  take  poison.  Paying  no  heed  to 
every  other  consideration  of  the  merits  or  defects 
of  this  tragedy,  its  unfitness  for  stage  representa- 
tion is  evidenced  by  the  method  taken  to  con- 
clude it.  To  expect  a  miscellaneous  audience  to 
sympathize  with  a  piece  of  overstrained  senti- 
ment like  this — a  great  and  victorious  general, 
with  an  army  devoted  to  him  personally,  led  to 
destroy  himself  on  the  very  eve  of  his  final 
triumph,  in  consequence  of  his  feelings  having 
been  hurt  on  learning  that  the  city  to  whose  in- 
terests he  has  been  uniformly  loyal,  has  come  to 
distrust  him  and  is  planning  to  destroy  him — 
to  expect  sympathy  with  a  course  of  conduct 
which  is  even  more  unnatural,  if  possible,  than 
it  is  irrational,  could  never  enter  the  mind  of  a 
dramatist  who  sought  to  portray  life  as  it  is  and 
men  as  they  are. 

The  most  damaging  thing  that  could  be  said 
against  "Strafford"  was  that  it  indicated  a  lack 
of  that  dramatic  skill  which  enables  a  writer  to 
construct  a  successful  acting  play.     But  one  can 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  73 

be  a  great  poet  without  being  a  great  dramatic 
poet.  Browning's  next  venture  was  in  his  favor- 
ite analysis  of  character.  It  was  a  production 
which  he  had  long  been  contemplating,  and  upon 
which,  with  frequent  interruptions,  he  had  long 
been  working.  It  is  sometimes  stated — I  know 
not  on  what  authority — that  it  was  begun  in 
1838.  Yet  unless  I  am  grossly  mistaken,  "Sor- 
dello  "  is  the  work  to  which  he  alludes  in  the  pref- 
ace to  the  original  edition  of  "Paracelsus."  Be 
that  as  it  may,  we  know  that  it  was  advertised 
on  one  of  the  leaves  of  the  published  play  of 
"Strafford"  as  then  nearly  ready.  We  know 
further  from  the  diary  of  Harriet  Martineau  that 
on  December  23,  1837,  Browning  told  her  that 
the  poem  in  question  would  soon  be  done;^  and 
that  on  April  1 1  of  the  year  following,  he  called 
upon  her  just  before  leaving  for  Venice  whither 
he  was  going  in  order  to  get  a  view  of  the  locali- 
ties mentioned  in  it.^ 

However  uncertain  the  time  of  composition, 
there  is  not  as  much  vagueness  in  our  knowl- 
edge of  that,  as  there  is  in  our  knowledge  of  the 

'  "  Memorials  of  Harriet  Martineau,"  by  Maria  Weston  Chap- 
man, in  Autobiography  of,  Boston,  1877,  vol.  II,  p.  325. 
^  Ibid.,  p.  337. 


74 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


hero  of  the  poem.  Here  it  suffices  to  say  that 
he  was  a  troubadour  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
the  mention  of  whom  by  Dante,  in  the  "  Purga- 
torio"  has  assured  him  of  a  wider  recognition 
than  has  been  gained  for  him  by  the  httle  which 
has  been  preserved  of  his  own  writings.  So  far, 
in  truth,  as  the  value  of  Browning's  production  is 
concerned,  the  Sordello  of  history  may  be  dis- 
missed from  consideration.  The  actual  fort- 
unes of  the  hero  were  of  the  slightest  account  in 
the  scope  of  the  work.  This  Is  true  also  of  the 
various  other  characters  introduced  into  it. 
They  serve  little  other  purpose  than  to  give  an 
air  of  actuality  to  the  events  described  as  tak- 
ing place.  But  the  poem  itself,  Browning  em- 
phatically declared,  was  nothing  more  than  a 
study  In  the  development  of  a  soul.  Accord- 
ingly It  was  from  this  point  of  view  alone  that  he 
wished  it  to  be  judged. 
v^  "Strafford"  had  been  a  disappointment.  The 
faults  of  "Paracelsus"  had  been  there  exhibited 
In  an  aggravated  form,  while  the  beauties  of  that 
work  were  conspicuously  absent.  But  the  de- 
scent in  popular  estimate  due  to  the  play  was 
nothing  compared  to  that  caused  by  the  poem 
which   followed    it.      Perhaps   there   Is   no   In- 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  75 

Stance  in  literary  history  of  an  author  who  pro- 
ceeded to  destroy  his  own  reputation  with  more 
systematic  endeavor  than  did  Browning  in  the 
composition  of  "Sordello."  Certainly  never 
were  efforts  of  that  sort  attended  with  more 
overwhelming  success.  Nothing  was  neglected. 
"Paracelsus"  had  at  times  presented  difficulties 
to  the  most  thoughtful  reader.  But  to  thought- 
ful and  thoughtless  alike  "Sordello"  presented 
nothing  else.  Both  to  those  who  gave  them- 
selves up  to  its  careful  or  careless  perusal,  it 
was  very  much  in  the  situation  of  the  earth  as 
recorded  in  the  story  of  the  creation.  It  was 
without  form  and  void  and  darkness  was  on  the 
face  of  the  deep.  Had  the  earth  been  left  in 
that  state,  it  would  have  been  found  uninhabit- 
able. "Sordello"  was  left  in  that  state,  and  it 
was  found  unreadable. 

We  are  now  frequently  assured  that  Browning;^^^ 
is  not  really  obscure  at  all.  The  fault  is  not  with 
him,  but  with  us.  The  idea  that  such  a  charge 
can  be  made  against  "Sordello"  in  particular, we 
are  led  by  one  of  the  poet's  biographers  to  be- 
lieve, indicates  a  mental  obliquity  so  dense  that 
it  amounts  almost  to  moral  perversity.  It  is  in 
the  following  glowing  terms  that  the  late  Mr. 


76  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

William  Sharp,  in  his  hfe  of  the  poet,  expressed 
his  indignation  at  any  assertion  of  the  sort. 
"Surely,"  he  exclaimed,  "this  question  of 
Browning's  obscurity  was  expelled  to  the  limbo 
of  dead  stupidities  when  Mr.  Swinburne,  in  peri- 
ods as  resplendent  as  the  whirling  wheels  of 
Phoebus  Apollo's  chariot,  wrote  his  famous  in- 
cidental passage  on  Chapman." 

To  him  who  has  full  faith  in  the  view  pro- 
pounded by  the  biographer,  it  is  somewhat  de- 
pressing to  find  him  a  little  later  in  the  same  vol- 
ume inferentially  relegating  to  a  habitation  in 
this  limbo  of  dead  stupidities  the  opinions  of 
Douglas  Jerrold,  Tennyson,  and  the  Carlyles. 
He  tells  us  that  they  actually  professed  them- 
selves unable  to  understand.  From  his  later 
utterances  it  is  plain  that  Carlyle  indeed  fully 
v^  sympathized  with  his  wife,  who  said  that  she  had 
read  the  poem  through  without  being  able  to 
make  out  whether  Sordello  was  a  man,  a  city, 
or  a  book.  The  story  of  Jerrold  is  too  well  known 
to  bear  recounting  in  full,  and  I  refer  to  it  in  pass- 
ing mainly  because  of  the  attitude  toward  it  of 
Browning  himself.  Given  "Sordello"  to  read 
while  recovering  from  a  severe  illness,  Jerrold 
after  wrestling  with  it  for  a  while  sank  back  in  de- 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  77 

spair  in  his  bed  with  the  exclamation,  "O  God,  I 
am  an  idiot!"  The  poet  used  to  enjoy  narrating 
this  incident,  though  naturally  he  took  the  ground 
that  there  was  no  justification  for  the  feeling. 
Yet  it  must  fairly  be  conceded  that  none  of  the 
persons  just  mentioned  can  be  deemed  much  in- 
ferior to  the  average  extoller  of  Browning's  clear- 
ness; collectively  they  might  even  be  considered 
equal  to  the  Swinburne-Sharp  combination  of  in- 
tellectual astuteness  and  resplendent  rhetoric. 

This  contemporary  inability  to  understand  v- 
and  appreciate  "Sordello"  has  been  explained 
by  some  Browning  enthusiasts  as  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  public  of  the  time  in  which  it  appeared 
was  not  intellectually  athletic  enough  to  grapple 
with  its  difficulties.  To  overcome  these  was 
needed  the  virile  mental  vigor  of  our  own  more 
robust  generation.  Accordingly  we  can  look 
down  with  complacency  as  well  as  compassion 
upon  the  failure  to  comprehend  of  still  others  of 
those  frailer  spirits  of  the  past  who  retired  baffled 
before  what  is  to  us  so  easy.  One  of  these  gentle 
souls  was  Harriet  Martineau.  She  had  been 
captivated  by  "Paracelsus."  In  her  autobiog- 
raphy she  tells  us  that  the  poem  having  been  lent 
her,  she,  for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  passed  a 


78  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

night  without  sleeping  a  wink  in  consequence  of 
reading  a  portion  of  it  before  going  to  bed.  But 
"Sordello"  she  found  not  conducive  to  wakeful- 
^  ness.  The  attempted  reading  of  it  had  made 
Jerrold  fear  for  his  sanity;  it  made  her  fear  for 
her  health.  "I  was  so  wholly  unable  to  under- 
stand it,"  she  writes,  "that  I  supposed  myself 
ill."  Had  she  been  really  taken  ill,  it  would  have 
appeared  a  just  punishment  for  the  advice  she 
had  given  the  poet  in  this  interview  of  the  23d  of 
December,  1837,  already  mentioned.  He  told 
her  then  that  not  only  *'Sordello"  would  soon  be 
done,  but  that  he  had  come  to  the  conclusion  to 
deny  himself  preface  and  notes,  as  he  must  choose 
between  being  historian  or  poet,  and  therefore 
could  not  split  the  interest.  She  confirmed  him 
in  this  attitude.  "I  advised  him,"  she  said,  "to 
let  the  poem  tell  its  own  tale."  Accordingly,  it  was 
/I"  sent  forth  in  its  native  obscurity.  Rather  than 
not  split  the  interest,  no  interest  was  left  to  split. 
Charles  Kingsley  must  also  be  included  among 
the  contemporary  stupids.  Haifa  score  of  years 
later  than  "Sordello,"  his  "Alton  Locke"  was 
published.  In  it  the  hero  is  represented  by  the 
novelist  as  giving  an  account  of  the  conversation 
he  holds  with  the  girl  of  higher  station  with  whom 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  79 

he  is  In  love.  "She  talked,"  he  says,  ''about 
poetry,  Tennyson,  and  Wordsworth;  asked  me 
if  I  understood  Browning's  "Sordello"; — and 
she  comforted  me,  after  my  stammering  con- 
fession that  I  did  not,  by  telling  me  that  she  was 
delighted  to  hear  that;  for  she  did  not  under- 
stand it  either  and  it  was  pleasant  to  have  a 
companion  in  ignorance."  Even  earlier  than 
this  Lowell  had  relegated  his  personal  opinion 
to  this  limbo  of  dead  stupidities.  In  a  review 
of  Browning's  works,  which  was  published  in 
1848,  he  gave  the  most  cordial  of  recognitions  to 
the  genius  of  the  poet — at  a  time,  too,  when 
such  recognition  was  far  from  frequent  in  his 
own  country.  But  while  conceding  the  excel- 
lence of  detached  passages  in  "Sordello"  he 
pointed  out  its  formlessness  and  the  inadequacy 
of  its  workmanship.  "It  was  a  fine  poem,"  he 
said,  "before  the  author  wrote  it."  His  general 
opinion  as  to  its  obscurity  he  had  no  hesitation 
in  expressing.  "We  may  as  well  say  bluntly," 
he  remarked,  "it  is  totally  incomprehensible  as 
a  connected  whole."  ^ 

There  is  even  a  sadder  story  to  be  told  of  the 
impression  produced  by  this  work.   Among  those 

'  North  American  Review  for  April,  1848. 


8o  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

who  lacked  then  the  requisite  insight  now  so 
common  among  the  poet's  devotees  must  be 
reckoned  the  woman  who  was  in  a  short  time  to 
become  his  wife.  She  had  hailed  Browning  be- 
fore she  knew  him  personally  as  the  King  of  the 
Mystics.  During  the  year  before  her  marriage, 
when  friendship  was  ripening  into  love,  she  ad- 
mitted his  obscurity — not,  indeed,  on  the  subject 
of  his  feelings  toward  herself  personally,  in  re- 
gard to  which  from  a  very  early  period  of  their 
acquaintance  Browning  seems  to  have  ex- 
hibited so  little  of  his  usual  obscurity  that  he 
fairly  terrified  her  at  first  by  his  clearness. }  Miss 
Barrett  at  that  time  confessed  to  a  correspondent 
that  she  herself  was  guilty  of  the  sin  of  Sphinxine 
literature,  and  had  struggled  hard  to  renounce  it. 
"Do  you  know,"  she  added  plaintively,  "I  have 
been  told  that  /  have  written  things  harder  to  in- 
terpret than  Browning  himself? — only  I  can  not, 
can  not  believe  it — he  is  so  very  hard."  *  To  the 
same  friend  she  declared  that  **Sordello"  had 
many  fine  things,  and  was  well  worthy  of  study, 
and,  indeed,  very  peculiarly  in  need  of  study. 
She  would  not  therefore  recommend  its  perusal, 

'  "The  Letters  of  Elizabeth  Browning,"  New  York,  1898,  vol.  I, 
P-  254. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  8i 

though  she  was  eager  to  have  him  read  "Para- 
celsus." "Sordello,"  she  remarked,  had  been 
thrown  down  by  many  as  unintelligible,  and  had 
been  retained  by  herself  as  a  specimen  of  the 
Sphinxine  literature  in  all  its  power.  Under  the 
circumstances,  this  obtuseness  may  be  forgiven 
her,  Mr.  Swinburne's  essay  on  Chapman  had 
not  been  written  at  that  time,  and  in  consequence 
she  could  not  well  have  been  expected  to  know 
better. 

If  these  were  the  feelings  of  contemporaries 
who  were  the  most  eminent  in  the  literary  world, 
we  can  get  some  idea  of  the  state  of  mind  of  the 
ordinary  critic  at  the  time  the  poem  appeared. 
It  is  putting  it  mildly  to  say  that  he  was  dum- 
founded.  "Sordello"  came  out  at  the  very  end 
of  February.  Then  as  now  the  leading  periodi- 
cals which  devoted  themselves  more  or  less  to 
literary  criticism  were  frequently,  if  not  regularly, 
furnished  with  advance  copies.  Consequently  it 
was  not  unusual  for  them  to  review  books  as 
soon  as  they  were  nominally  published.  But 
hardly  anything  of  the  kind  took  place  now. 
The  critical  journals  were  either  silent,  or  they 
waited.  The  Spectator  was  the  only  important 
weekly  that  gave   immediate    attention  to  the 


82  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

work;  but  that  it  was  enabled  to  do  by  its  treat- 
ment of  it.  It  went  on  the  principle  that  it  is  not 
necessary  to  wade  all  through  a  mud-puddle  to 
become  aware  that  it  is  a  mud-puddle.  ''What 
this  poem  may  be  in  its  extent,"  it  observed,  "we 
are  unable  to  say,  for  we  cannot  read  it.  What- 
ever may  be  the  poetical  spirit  of  Browning,  it  is 
so  overlaid  in  'Sordello'  by  digression,  affecta- 
tion, obscurity,  and  all  the  faults  that  spring,  it 
would  seem,  from  crudity  of  plan  and  self-opin- 
ion, which  will  neither  cull  thoroughly  nor  revise 
composition,  that  the  reader — at  least  the  reader 
of  our  stamp — turns  away."  Two  weeks  later 
The  Atlas  paid  attention  to  the  poem.  Its  critic 
had  been  an  ardent  admirer  of  what  was  then 
deemed  Browning's  first  work.  But  in  "Sor- 
dello" he  was  utterly  disappointed,  and  ex- 
pressed with  earnestness  his  disapproval.  It 
was  worse,  he  said,  than  "Strafford."  That 
drama  had  shown  a  descent  from  the  high  prom- 
ise of  "Paracelsus."  In  this  third  production, 
however,  all  the  faults  of  the  first  were  exhibited 
in  an  intensified  form,  without  the  compensation 
of  an  equal  amount  of  excellence  in  any  single 
point  of  view.^ 

*  March  28,  1840. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  83 


Neither  the  Literary  Gazette  nor  TheExammer 
reviewed  the  poem  at  all.  In  the  case  of  the  lat- 
ter the  omission  was  peculiarly  significant.  We 
know  from  notices  written  by  Forster  of  certain 
of  Browning's  later  work  that "  Sordello  "  was  too 
much  for  even  that  faithful  and  devoted  friend. 
He  clearly  did  not  feel  it  in  his  power  to  speak 
well  of  it;  therefore  he  chose  to  say  nothing  at  all. 
The  only  review  which  seems  to  have  been  the 
result  of  an  effort,  honest  whether  adequate  or 
inadequate,  to  penetrate  into  the  meaning  of  the 
poem,  was  that  which  appeared  in  TheAthenceum. 
This,  however,  did  not  come  out  till  three  months 
later.  The  criticism,  though  the  fruit  of  careful 
study  and  of  arduous  and  it  might  almost  be  said 
of  indignant  industry,  was  hardly  more  favorable 
than  the  others.  It  spoke  in  the  severest  terms 
of  the  mannerisms  found  in  the  poem,  of  its 
peculiarities  of  language,  of  its  disregard  of 
euphony,  of  its  occupying  the  reader's  attention 
with  novelties  of  construction  which  he  must  mas- 
ter in  order  to  grasp  the  meaning  lost  to  appre- 
hension in  cloudy  depths.  It  further  censured 
the  oracular  utterances  which  turned  out  when 
unwrapped  from  their  profusion  of  words  to  be 
nothing  more  than  commonplace  truths.     I  am 


84  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

here  stating  the  critic's  point  of  view,  not  up- 
holding its  correctness.  But  whether  the  judg- 
ment be  true  or  false  it  is  worth  quoting  as  seem- 
ingly the  only  contemporary  notice  of  the  work 
in  which  a  serious  attempt  was  made  to  study  it 
as  a  whole/ 

So  much  for  the  estimate  of  "Sordello"  taken 
at  the  time  by  the  leading  critical  authorities. 
Few  as  have  been  the  citations  given,  they  may 
be  safely  regarded  as  fairly  representative  of 
general  contemporary  opinion.  If  a  favorable 
word  can  be  found  for  the  work  in  any  quarter, 
even  the  obscurest,  it  seems  to  have  escaped  so  far 
the  hardest  search.  Certain  it  is  that  Browning 
did  all  that  lay  in  his  power  to  make  difficult  the 
comprehension  of  the  poem;  at  least  he  omitted 
to  do  anything  that  would  render  its  compre- 
hension easier.  All  the  usual,  not  to  say  neces- 
sary, helps  were  left  unprovided.  Let  us  con- 
sider as  a  single  item  the  historical  setting.  The 
action  of  the  poem  takes  place  in  Italy  in  the 
earlier  half  of  the  thirteenth  century.  In  this 
remote  period,  in  the  history  of  a  foreign  land, 
the  events  which  form  the  background  consist  of 
nothing  more  important  than  the  petty  feuds 

*  Athenc£U7n,  May  3,  1840. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  85 

which  went  on  in  the  Italian  cities  between  the 
adherents  of  the  Pope  and  of  the  Emperor.  The 
contests  of  these  factions  often  deserve  Milton's 
characterization  of  the  bickerings  between  the 
Anglo-Saxon  kingdoms,  that  it  was  as  worth 
while  to  chronicle  the  wars  of  kites  and  crows 
flocking  and  fighting  in  the  air.  No  one  but  a 
special  student  of  the  period  would  or  could  know 
the  details,  or  form  any  conception  of  the  char- 
acters whose  names  flit  to  and  fro  across  the 
pages  of  the  poem. 

Yet  the  account  of  the  mental  struggles  Sor- 
dello  is  represented  as  undergoing  presuppose 
some  knowledge  of  the  facts  both  of  his  personal 
career  and  of  the  events  in  which  he  took  part. 
If  this  knowledge  does  not  exist  or  is  not  fur- 
nished, the  reader  is  confused  at  the  very  outset 
by  the  mention  of  names  about  whose  owners  the 
story  gives  no  light,  and  by  allusions  to  incidents 
of  which  he  is  almost  inevitably  in  the  blindest 
ignorance.  They  have  not  much  bearing,  it  can 
justly  be  said,  upon  the  development  of  the 
hero's  soul.  So  much  the  more  reason  was  there 
that  these  obstacles  in  the  way  of  comprehension 
should  have  been  removed.  The  very  briefest 
outline  of  the  facts  referred  to  or  mentioned,  the 


86  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

very  briefest  account  of  the  personages  and  places 
introduced  would  have  given  the  reader  a  van- 
tage-ground from  which  to  attack  the  other  dif- 
ficukies  of  the  poem.  Such  a  course  would  cer- 
tainly have  prevented  Mrs.  Carlyle  from  being 
in  doubt  whether  Sordello  was  a  man,  a  city,  or 
a  book. 

But  Browning  was  far  from  pandering  to  that 
depraved  taste  which  hungered  and  thirsted  for 
useful  information.  He  disdained  to  impart  it. 
The  facts  contained  or  referred  to  in  the  poem 
were,  he  said,  of  no  importance  in  themselves  as 
regards  the  main  idea  he  had  in  mind.  At  any 
rate  the  reader  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  himself 
for  not  knowing  them.  Such  was  his  attitude, 
not  only  in  the  case  of  this  work,  but  of  several 
which  appeared  subsequently.  He  accordingly 
condescended  to  cast  no  light  upon  "Sordello." 
The  only  assistance  afforded  later  to  its  compre- 
hension was  the  running  title  at  the  head  of  each 
page.  These  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  original 
edition.  They  are  at  times  so  much  a  help  that 
one  naturally  waxes  indignant  that  a  help  of  this 
sort  should  be  needed  at  all;  for  the  obscurity 
which  envelops  the  work  as  a  whole  extends  con- 
stantly to  details.     For  illustration,  there  is  in 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  87 

the  opening  book  an  apostrophe  to  some  poet, 
whom  he  asks  this  time  to  come  not  near  and 
thereby  scare  him  with  his  pure  face.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  text  to  indicate  who  is  the  person 
here  addressed.  Scores  of  writers  might  be 
guessed  by  those  ignorant  of  Browning's  special 
likes  and  dislikes;  and  in  that  condition  must  be 
assumed  to  have  been  nearly  all  the  readers  he 
was  then  likely  to  have.  The  running  title  now 
on  the  page  following  dispels  the  doubt.  It  is 
headed  "Shelley  departing,  Verona  appears." 
This  enables  us  to  see  who  it  is  that  the  author 
had  in  mind;  but  such  an  illegitimate  way  of 
imparting  needed  information  is  not  the  way  for 
him  to  follow  who  writes  to  be  understood. 

To  the  very  end  of  his  days,  however,  Brown- 
ing never  swerved  from  the  belief  that  he  himself 
was  not  in  the  slightest  degree  responsible  for  the 
failure  of  this  poem — for  the  failure  of  people  to 
buy  it,  or  of  people  to  understand  it  who  did  buy 
it.  In  the  case  of  any  one  of  his  works,  indeed, 
he  was  inclined  to  be  impatient  with  those  who 
hinted  that  labor  spent  upon  its  correction  might 
result  in  adding  to  its  intelligibility.  As  regards 
"Sordello,"  however,  once  he  paid  heed  to  a  sug- 
gestion of  this  sort.     It  came  from  the  woman 


88  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

who  was  soon  to  give  him  the  promise  of  becom- 
ing his  wife.  In  September,  1845,  she  made  use 
of  the  influence  she  had  already  acquired  and 
urged  him  to  recast  the  poem,  "It  is,"  she 
wrote,  **Hke  a  noble  picture  with  its  face  to  the 
wall  just  now,  or  at  least  in  the  shadow."  It 
needed  drawing  together  and  fortifying  in  the 
connections  and  associations,  ''which,"  she 
added,  "hang  as  loosely  every  here  and  there  as 
those  in  a  dream,  and  confound  the  reader  who 
persists  in  thinking  himself  awake." 

That  Browning  had  determined  to  make  a  re- 
vision in  consequence  of  the  wish  she  expressed, 
the  further  correspondence  between  the  two  re- 
veals. In  a  letter  written  to  him  the  following 
month.  Miss  Barrett  speaks  of  "the  new  avatar 
of 'Sordello'  which  you  taught  me  to  look  for." 
The  matter  w^as  therefore,  clearly  in  contem- 
plation. But  the  deity  whose  avatar  she  ex- 
pected never  became  incarnate.  While  in  Paris, 
in  the  first  half  of  1856,  Browning  did  indeed 
make  an  effort  to  revise  the  poem.  He  spent 
much  labor  and  pains,  he  tells  us,  to  turn  the 
work  into  what  the  many  might  like  instead  of 
what  the  few  must  like.  But  he  gave  up  the  at- 
tempt and  left  it  essentially  as  he  found  it.     Lines 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  89 

were  added,  changes  of  expression  were  made, 
but  there  was  nothing  altered  in  the  framework 
and  contexture.  What  the  poem  needed  in  order 
to  be  rendered  intelHgible  and  interesting  was 
not  occasional  revision,  but  a  complete  recast; 
and  of  an  undertaking  of  this  kind  Browning  had 
then  become  absolutely  incapable. 

In  dedicating  "Sordello"  later  to  his  friend 
Melsand,  of  Dijon,  the  poet  told  him  that  he 
blamed  nobody  for  its  failure,  least  of  all  himself. 
This  last  phrase  is  significant.  It  reflects  his  in- 
variable mental  attitude.  His  faults  of  expres- 
sion, he  acknowledged,  were  many;  but  people 
might  have  surmounted  the  difficulties  caused  by 
them,  had  they  cared  to  take  the  pains;  if  they 
did  not  care  enough  for  the  book  or  its  writer  to 
do  this,  what  would  avail  its  faultlessness  ^ 
Never  was  there  a  more  unblushing  declaration 
on  the  part  of  an  author  of  his  willingness  to  shift 
upon  the  reader  the  burden  of  clearing  a  path 
through  the  jungle  of  his  expression  which  he 
himself  was  too  indolent  or  too  indifferent  to 
open  up.  An  attitude  of  this  sort  jars  heavily 
upon  the  feelings  of  the  man  who  regards  it  as  the 
first  requirement  of  a  book  to  be  made  as  read- 
able as  possible  for  those  for  whose  perusal  it  was 


90 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


designed:  and  that  one  of  the  first  requisites 
for  this  result  is  that  it  should  not  need  help  out- 
side of  itself  to  be  rendered  intelligible.  Per- 
sonally, too,  I  confess  to  getting  no  particular 
enjoyment  from  a  production  which  stands  in 
need  of  perpetual  commentary.  Still  tastes  are 
different.  The  existence  of  many  worthy  per- 
sons must  be  conceded  who  are  unable  to  enjoy 
literary  food  of  any  sort  until  it  has  gone  through 
a  preliminary  process  of  mastication  by  some- 
body else. 

It  follows  from  what  has  been  said  that  this 
poem  Is  much  more  a  revelation  of  Browning's 
soul  that  it  is  of  Sordello's.  It  is  further  to  be 
added  that  It  fully  merited  the  fate  which  it  has 
been  its  lot  to  undergo.  In  one  sense  It  Is  Inter- 
esting as  a  study.  It  has  all  the  worst  qualities 
of  Browning's  style.  Rugged  versification,  ab- 
rupt transition  we  are  prepared  to  put  up  with 
In  all  his  pieces.  But  in  this  poem,  these  pe- 
culiarities of  diction  are  carried  to  the  extreme. 
The  liberty  taken  with  expression  often  more 
than  approaches  lawlessness;  It  Is  lawlessness 
Itself.  As  one  illustration  out  of  several,  phrases 
and  sometimes  clauses  are  Inserted  Into  sen- 
tences, necessarily  breaking  the  continuity  of  the 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  91 

thought.  Sparingly  introduced,  these,  if  brief, 
may  be  no  blemish;  sometimes  they  are  a  posi- 
tive ornament.  But  it  is  an  essential  condition 
of  their  value  that  they  should  be  introduced  only 
sparingly.  In  "Sordello"  they  not  only  appear 
often,  but  sometimes  in  the  most  aggravated — 
and  to  use  a  modern  colloquialism — in  the  most 
aggravating  form.  In  more  than  one  instance 
the  intercalary  sentence  v^hich  occupies  the  mid- 
dle of  another  consists  of  several  lines.  Neces- 
sarily, the  reader  fails  to  carry  in  his  mind, 
amidst  this  pressure  of  intrusive  matter,  what  the 
author  has  been  talking  about  previously.  Con- 
sequently, v\^hen  he  arrives  at  the  jumping-ofF 
place  of  the  remarks  inserted,  he  has  to  retrace 
his  steps  and  go  back  to  v^here  he  left  off  in  or- 
der to  resume  the  connection  of  thought.  This 
usage  is  bad  enough  in  prose;  in  poetry  it  is 
absolutely  intolerable.  It  could  never  be  re- 
sorted to  by  the  conscious  literary  artist. 

This,  however,  is  but  a  single  one  of  the  fatal 
defects  which  beset  expression  in  "Sordello." 
The  poem  fails  in  a  number  of  other  and  more 
essential  things  which  go  to  constitute  poetry. 
There  it  stops  short.  You  may  apply  to  it  any 
other  characterization  you  choose.     You  may 


92 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


call  it  metaphysical,  psychological,  intellectual, 
problematical,  profoundly  thoughtful,  what  in- 
deed you  will.  But  never  once  does  it  fulfil  the 
function  for  which  poetry  exists.  It  never  once 
stirs  the  heart,  it  never  once  uplifts  the  soul. 
As  an  aid  to  mental  discipline,  as  an  incitement 
to  the  efforts  of  those  who  have,  or  fancy  they 
have,penetrated  its  mystery  and  thereby  achieved 
an  intellectual  victory  against  great  odds,  it  may 
be  regarded  as  fulfilling  a  valuable  function. 
But  by  those  who  believe  that  the  first  business  of 
a  poem  is  to  be  poetical,  it  will  never  be  regarded 
otherwise  than  as  a  failure.  It  will  remain  a 
colossal  derelict  upon  the  sea  of  literature,  in- 
flicting damage  upon  the  strongest  intellects  that 
graze  it  even  slightly,  and  hopelessly  wrecking 
the  frailer  mental  craft  that  come  into  full  colli- 
sion with  it — at  least  such  is  the  impression  one 
gets  from  the  essays  written  upon  it. 

I  have  dwelt  so  long  upon  this  work  because 
of  the  influence  it  had  upon  Browning's  later 
fortunes.  It  was  something  more  than  failure 
that  greeted  "Sordello."  It  imposed  a  burden 
upon  the  reputation  of  the  poet  against  the  press- 
ure of  which  it  was  impossible  for  it  to  bear  up. 
The  pity  of  it  is  that  its  ill  success  not  merely 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  93 

Injured  the  repute  of  this  particular  production, 
but  it  placed  what  was  soon  to  show  itself  an 
almost  unsurmountable  obstacle  in  the  way  of 
the  beautiful  works  that  were  speedily  to  follow. 
The  public  mind  was  thenceforth  prejudiced 
against  the  poet.  With  the  appearance  of  "Sor- 
dello"  began  the  eclipse  of  Browning's  reputa- 
tion which  even  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  a 
third  of  a  century  had  not  passed  away.  Not 
but  that  he  had  in  the  worst  of  times  a  band  of 
devoted  admirers.  But  the  number  was  small, 
nor  were  those  composing  it  influential,  however 
able.  With  the  general  public  of  even  the  highly 
educated  he  thenceforth  ceased  to  be  a  power. 
This  indeed  is  much  more  true  of  England  than 
of  America.  Yet  even  in  this  country,  where 
familiarity  with  his  writings  was  altogether 
greater  than  in  his  own,  his  reputation  was  far 
from  proportionate  to  his  merits.  In  England 
there  was  further  a  sort  of  resentful  feeling  as  to 
the  character  of  his  work,  as  If  It  evinced  a  deter- 
mined disposition  not  to  pay  any  heed  to  the 
legitimate  requirements  of  the  reader.  "He  is 
further  chargeable,"  wrote  the  reviewer  of  "Sor- 
dello"  in  The  Atlas,  "with  betraying  the  dis- 
agreeable truth   that  the  author  has  not  only 


94 


ROBERT  BROWNING 


benefited  nothing  from  experience,  but  that  the 
sins  of  his  verse  are  premeditated,  wilful,  and  in- 
curable." These  words  assuredly  expressed 
the  sentiment  of  large  numbers.  Included,  too, 
among  them  were  many  who  liked  Browning  as 
a  man,  many  who  had  been  previously  disposed 
to  admire  him  as  a  poet.  ''Ephraim  is  joined 
to  his  idols,  let  him  alone,"  represented  thence- 
forth the  general  state  of  mind.  Let  alone 
severely  he  most  assuredly  was. 


Ill 

"BELLS  AND   POMEGRANATES" 

"  PIPPA  PASSES."    "A  BLOT  I'  THE  'SCUTCHEON  " 

The  success  of  "Sordello"  had  not  been  such 
as  to  encourage  the  production  of  further  works. 
But  Browning  himself  was  not  discouraged, 
either  at  the  time  or  later.  He  had,  as  he  wrote 
to  a  friend  the  following  year,  "a  head  full  of 
projects — mean  to  song-write,  play-write  forth- 
with." Even  then  three  works  had  been  writ- 
ten or  were  in  contemplation.  He  felt,  indeed, 
his  mind  thronging  with  ideas  to  which  he  must 
give  utterance  and  solicited  by  schemes  which  he 
must  carry  into  effect. 

But  a  publisher  could  not  well  be  expected  to 
furnish  at  his  own  expense  literature  which  the 
public  was  unwilling  to  buy;  and  Browning  him- 
self could  hardly  procure  the  means  to  under- 
take any  great  venture  at  his  own  risk.     At  this 

95 


96  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

juncture  Moxon  made  him  a  proposal.  He  was 
at  that  time  bringing  out  editions  of  the  Ehza- 
bethan  dramatists  in  a  cheap  form,  printing 
their  works  in  fine  but  clear  type,  two  columns 
to  a  page.  If  Browning  was  willing  to  publish 
his  poems  in  this  manner,  the  expense  would  not 
amount  to  more  than  twelve  to  sixteen  pounds 
for  each  volume,  issued  as  a  pamphlet.  It  could 
in  consequence  be  sold  for  a  small  sum,  and 
readers  might  naturally  be  attracted  by  the  low- 
ness  of  the  price.  Browning  accepted  the  pro- 
posal. Hence  arose  the  series  of  volumes  which 
appeared  under  the  general  title  of  "Bells  and 
Pomegranates."  These  began  in  1841  and 
ended  in  1846.  They  contain  some  of  the  best 
work  the  poet  ever  produced;  assuredly  many 
of  the  pieces  by  which  he  is  best  known  to  the 
majority  of  readers.  Yet  in  spite  of  their  cheap- 
ness and  excellence  these  volumes  seem  to  have 
attained  nothing  like  the  circulation  they  de- 
served. I  can  not  find  that  a  second  edition  of 
any  of  them  ever  came  out  at  the  time.  There 
is  an  apparent  exception  in  the  case  of  one  of  the 
tragedies;    but  it  is  only  apparent. 

The  general  title  given  to  these  works  puzzled 
everybody;  at  least  everybody  who  has  left  a  re- 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  97 

corded  opinion.  In  fact,  it  continued  to  remain 
a  mystery  until  the  concluding  number  of  the 
series.  Then  Browning,  under  what  may  be 
called  domestic  pressure,  condescended  to  give 
an  explanation  of  it.  The  reviewer  in  The 
AthencEum  was  perplexed  in  his  notice  of  the 
first  number  of  the  series,  and  his  words  are  sug- 
gestive of  the  reputation  the  poet  had  now  ac- 
quired. "Mr.  Browning's  conundrums,"  he 
wrote,  "begin  with  his  very  title-page.  'Bells 
and  Pomegranates'  is  the  general  title  given 
(it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  Mr.  Browning  knows 
why,  but  certainly  we  have  not  yet  found  out — 
indeed  *we  give  it  up')."*  It  proved  later,  in- 
deed, too  much  for  the  comprehension  of  his 
future  wife.  "Do  tell  me,"  she  wrote  in  Octo- 
ber, 1845,  "what  you  mean  precisely  by  your 
*Bell  and  Pomegranates'  title.  I  have  always 
understood  it  to  refer  to  the  Hebraic  priestly  gar- 
ment— but  Mr.  Kenyon  held  against  me  the 
other  day  that  your  reference  was  different, 
though  he  had  not  the  remotest  idea  how.  And 
yesterday  I  forgot  to  ask,  for  not  the  first  time. 
Tell  me,  too,  why  you  should  not  in  the  new  num- 
ber satisfy  by  a  note  somewhere,  the  Davuses  of 

'  No.  737,  Dec.  II,  1841. 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


the  world  who  are  in  the  majority,  with  a  solu- 
tion of  this  one  Sphinx  riddle."^  To  this  re- 
quest Browning  acceded,  though  he  thought  it 
best  to  put  off  the  explanation  till  the  closing 
number  of  the  series.^  But  before  that  time 
came,  he  seems  to  have  changed  his  mind.  He 
was  apparently  disposed  to  let  the  title  remain 
in  what  was  to  himself  its  self-evident  clearness. 
At  least  that  is  the  impression  received  from  the 
words  of  the  one  person  who  would  not  be  denied . 
**I  persist  in  thinking,"  wrote  Miss  Barrett  in 
March,  1846,^  "that  you  ought  not  to  be  too  dis- 
dainful to  explain  your  meaning  in  the  '  Pome- 
granates.' Surely  you  might  say  in  a  word  or 
two,  that  your  title  having  been  doubted  about 
(to  your  surprise,  you  might  say!)  you  refer  the 
doubters  to  the  Jewish  priest's  robe,  and  the 
Rabbinical  gloss — for  I  suppose  it  is  a  gloss  on 
the  robe — do  you  not  think  so  \  Consider  that 
Mr.  Kenyon  and  I  may  fairly  represent  the  aver- 
age intelligence  of  your  readers — and  that  he  was 
altogether  in  the  clouds  as  to  your  meaning — 
had  not  the  most  distant  notion  of  it — while  I, 


*  "The  Letters  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett," 
vol.  I,  p.  248. 

^  Ibid.,  p.  249.  *  Ibid.,  p.  570. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  99 

taking  hold  of  the  priest's  garment,  missed  the 
Rabbins  and  the  distinctive  significance,  as  com- 
pletely as  he  did.  Now  why  should  you  be  too 
proud  to  teach  such  persons  as  only  desire  to  be 
taught?" 

Miss  Barrett's  persistence  at  last  won  the  day. 
Browning  submitted,  as  she  put  it,  "quite  at  the 
point  of  the  bayonet."  ^  Accordingly,  when  the 
eighth  and  final  number  of  the  series  came  out  in 
1846,  he  reluctantly  and  somewhat  grumblingly 
proceeded  to  paint  the  lily  by  explaining  still 
further  what  was  in  his  eyes  self-evident.  Per- 
haps nothing  can  be  found  anywhere  more  in- 
dicative than  were  his  words  on  this  occasion, 
of  his  general  attitude;  of  his  absolute  incapac- 
ity to  comprehend  that  a  particular  train  of  as- 
sociation of  ideas  familiar  to  him,  and  therefore 
to  him  perfectly  clear,  should  not  be  as  clear  to 
every  one  else.  "I  take  the  opportunity  of  ex- 
plaining," he  wrote,  "in  reply  to  inquiries,  that 
I  only  meant  by  that  title  to  indicate  an  endeavor 
toward  something  like  an  alternation,  or  mixt- 
ure of  music  with  discoursing,  sound  with  sense, 
poetry  with  thought,  which  looks  too  ambitious 

^  "  Letters  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett,"  vol.  II, 
p.  67. 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


thus  expressed,  so  the  symbol  was  preferred.  It 
is  Httle  to  the  purpose  that  such  is  actually  one  of 
the  most  familiar  of  the  many  Rabbinical  (and 
Patristic)  acceptations  of  the  phrase;  because  I 
confess,  that  letting  authority  alone,  I  supposed 
the  bare  words,  in  such  juxtaposition,  would 
sufficiently  convey  the  desired  meaning." 

There  you  see  it.  Of  course,  if  you  had  been 
possessed  of  any  sense,  you  would  have  seen  it 
before.  There  is  something  delightful  in  the 
naive  astonishment  expressed  that  any  one  should 
have  found  the  slightest  perplexity  in  compre- 
hending at  once  the  meaning  which  the  juxta- 
position of  the  two  main  words  of  the  title  so 
plainly  indicates.  It  is  furthermore  so  common 
a  thing  with  all  lovers  of  poetry  to  have  a  wide 
acquaintance  with  rabbinical  and  patristic  liter- 
ature that  this  knowledge  ought  to  have  suggested 
the  signification  to  him  who  had  not  the  sense  to 
guess  it  for  himself.  Browning's  course  has  been 
defended  on  the  ground  that  dealing  from  earliest 
years  with  out-of-the-way  topics,  they  had  be- 
come so  familiar  to  him  that  he  assumed  that  all 
persons  knew  them  as  well  as  he  did  himself. 
This  is  attributing  to  him  much  special  learning, 
but  little  sense  in  the  use  of  it.     His  acquire- 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING 


ments  were  certainly  great.  But  there  must 
always  be  a  certain  feeling  of  distrust  of  him 
who  seems  to  know  everything  about  subjects  of 
which  hardly  any  one  else  knows  anything.  In 
matters,  too,  where  he  can  be  followed  with 
comparative  ease,  he  more  than  once  displayed 
misapprehension  and  ignorance  where  he  as- 
sumed to  have  perfect  knowledge.  What  con- 
fidence, accordingly,  can  we  always  have  in  the 
value  of  the  treasures  he  brings  back  from  his 
excursions  into  the  realms  of  the  mysterious 
where  few  can  follow  him,  and  those  few  rarely 
readers  of  poetry .? 

So  much  for  the  title;  now  for  the  works  them- 
selves. The  first  number  of  the  series  was  "  Pippa 
Passes,"  To  ''Paracelsus"  Browning  had  re- 
fused to  apply  the  term  "drama";  yet  by  that 
designation  he  chose  to  denote  this  production. 
It  is  hard  to  see  why  he  should  have  given  to  the 
one  the  name  he  had  denied  to  the  other.  The 
only  easily  discoverable  reason  is  that  the  poet 
was  now  coming  to  be  dominated  by  the  doctrine 
of  the  unities.  He  consequently  called  the  later 
work  a  drama  because  the  scene  of  it  is  laid  in 
one  place,  and  the  time  is  limited  to  the  daylight 
of  one  day.     But  while  it  is  a  poem  dramatically 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


told,  it  is  in  no  proper  sense  of  the  word  what 
he  designated  it.  It  consists  of  a  series  of  ab- 
solutely independent  scenes  bound  together  by 
this  single  slight  tie,  that  upon  the  action  of  the 
various  personages  in  them,  Pippa,  as  she  passes, 
produces  a  deep  and  permanent  impression. 

The  poem  was  published  in  the  first  half  of 
1841.  Both  in  conception  and  execution  it  is  one 
of  Browning's  happiest  performances.  It  is  en- 
tirely free  from  certain  defects  which  are  apt  to 
characterize  his  other  pieces  of  a  dramatic  char- 
acter. There  is  nowhere  in  it  any  violation  of 
that  natural  probability  which  should  govern  the 
actions  and  emotions  of  the  characters.  It  is  an 
old  adage  that  truth  is  stranger  than  fiction.  We 
all  know  that  it  is  the  unexpected  that  frequently 
happens,  that  what  in  a  tale  would  seem  highly 
improbable  occurs  at  times  in  fact.  But  to  de- 
vices of  this  kind  neither  novelist  nor  playwright 
has  a  right  to  resort,  unless  in  very  exceptional 
instances.  They  are  precisely  of  the  nature  of 
the  deus  ex  machina  to  which  long  ago  Horace 
justly  objected.  Accordingly,  if  indulged  in  at 
all,  it  should  be  only  on  very  extraordinary  oc- 
casions. Writers  of  these  two  classes — that  is, 
novelists  and  playwrights — are  bound  to  repre- 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING 


103 


sent  men  as  they  appear  to  us  acting  under  con- 
ditions which  are  normal.  Even  when  the  cir- 
cumstances are  exceptional,  the  characters  are 
to  conduct  themselves  as  we  should  expect  to 
find  them  behaving  in  real  life.  To  resort  not 
to  the  merely  surprising,  but  to  the  surprising 
which  is  also  unnatural  and  improbable,  shows 
a  deficiency  in  skill,  if  not  in  the  highest  art.  It 
may  occasionally  be  pardoned  for  the  sake  of  the 
effect  it  produces,  but  it  can  rarely  be  approved. 
No  faultofthis  sort  appears  in  "Pippa  Passes," 
unless  one  were  to  consider  such  what  seems  to 
me  the  perfectly  legitimate  extension  to  several 
persons  of  an  influence  which  everybody  would 
concede  might  well  have  happened  to  any  partic- 
ular individual  of  them  all.  We  know  from  our 
ow^n  observation,  if  not  from  our  own  experience, 
that  a  remark  overheard,  a  chance  word  spoken 
with  not  the  least  thought  on  the  part  of  the 
speaker  of  affecting  the  course  of  another,  often 
influences  profoundly  the  whole  life  of  the  hearer. 
It  is  too  common  to  need  more  than  a  mere  state- 
ment; yet  in  this  work  for  the  first  time  in  litera- 
ture, at  least  in  English  literature,  has  the  idea  :^ 
been  set  forth  in  completeness.  Here  it  is  made 
the  groundwork  upon  which  the  whole  action  of 


I04  THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 

rant  of  father,  ignorant  of  mother,  appears  on  this 
one  day  of  pleasure  that  diversifies  her  year  of 
toil  as  the  central  figure  destined  to  influence  the 
future  of  the  four  groups  of  persons  whom  she 
pictures  to  herself  as  the  most  happy  in  Asolo — 
rising  slowly  in  her  own  conception  from  the  rapt- 
ure of  guilty  love,  through  the  love  of  bride  and 
groom,  of  mother  and  son,  to  the  happiness  of  the 
love  which  is  devoted  to  the  service  of  the  Mak< 
Impersonating  all  these  characters  in  her  fancy, 
she  comes  upon  each  of  the  groups  at  the  critical 
moment,  wakening  with  her  song  remorse  for 
guilt,  imparting  nobility  of  resolve,  strengthen- 
ing high-hearted  but  failing  resolution,  and 
again  utterly  destroying  the  force  of  insidious 
temptation.  Unconsciously  to  herself  she  has 
been  a  messenger  of  heaven  to  punish  the  guilty 
and  to  reward  the  good.  As  she  passes,  she 
leaves  behind  crime  loathing  its  own  foulness, 
evil  devices  frustrated,  misfortune  averted, 
schemes  that  threatened  her  own  fate  rendered 
abortive,  by  inspiring  the  characters  either  with 
remorse  or  with  feelings  which  impart  nobility 
to  life  and  bring  consolation  to  the  hour  of  death. 
The  scheme  of  the  poem  as  a  whole  is  worked 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  105 

out  with  consummate  skill.  It  is  both  high  mo- 
rality and  high  art.  It  is  free  from  almost  every- 
thing that  is  objectionable  in  Browning's  man- 
ner, though  of  course  it  is  not  free  from  his 
mannerisms;  for  if  the  mannerisms  were  lacking, 
the  work  would  hardly  have  seemed  Browning's. 
In  it,  too,  appeared  for  the  first  time  a  specimen 
of  that  vivid  and  vigorous  prose  conversation 
which  the  poet  was  to  exhibit  on  a  fuller  scale  in 
"A  Soul's  Tragedy,"  the  last  work  of  the  series. 
In  "Pippa  Passes"  this  power  is  little  more  than 
indicated;  but  in  the  second  part  of  *'A  Soul's 
Tragedy"  it  is  fully  exhibited.  It  is  there  so 
genuine,  so  much  more  dramatic  than  his  verse 
that  one  must  always  regret  that  Browning  did 
not  see  his  way  to  resort  to  it  more  frequently. 
It  is  especially  remarkable  for  being  so  distinct 
from  his  ordinary  prose,  as  regards  clearness  and 
naturalness  and  brilliancy.  All  these  it  has  in 
a  profusion  which  puts  the  poet  on  a  level  with 
the  greatest  of  the  Elizabethan  playwrights.  On 
the  contrary,  much  of  his  ordinary  prose  lacks  all 
the  charm  which  belongs  to  his  verse  and  ex- 
hibits nearly  all  its  defects. 

"Pippa  Passes"  has  been  from  the  beginning 
a  favorite  of  readers  with  whom  Browning  him- 


io6  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

self  Is  a  favorite.  In  their  early  correspondence, 
before  they  had  actually  met,  his  future  wife 
confessed  to  him  that  she  could  find  it  in  her 
heart  to  covet  the  authorship  of  that  poem  more 
than  of  any  other  of  his  works/  In  his  reply 
Browning  declared  that  he  himself  liked  it  better 
than  anything  else  he  had  ever  done.^  There 
was  every  reason  indeed  to  expect  for  it  great 
success,  at  least  with  the  most  cultivated  class 
readers.  Something  of  that  success  it  doubtless 
did  attain.  But  "Sordello"  had  now  accom- 
plished its  fatal  work.  There  is  no  obscurity  in 
"Pippa  Passes"  which  should  deter  from  its  full 
comprehension  any  reasonable  and  reasoning 
creature.  Those  peculiarities  of  expression 
which  in  previous  works  had  offended  so  many 
were  here,  but  they  were  few.  What  manner- 
isms were  exhibited,  were  exhibited  usually  in 
a  form  to  which  there  could  be  no  objection  even 
if  they  did  not  add  attractiveness  to  expression. 
Furthermore,  the  production  contained  ideas  of 
deepest  significance,  couched  in  poetry  of  the 
highest  order.     But  with  the  exception  of  The 

^  "Letters  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett,"  vol.  I, 

p.  22. 

=>  Ibid.,  p.  28. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  107 

Examiner  the  work  met  a  somewhat  cool  recep- 
tion from  the  leading  critical  organs  of  that  day. 
This  review  in  The  Examiner — which  is  found 
in  the  number  for  October  2,  1841 — is  notice- 
able, because  it  is  evident  from  it  that  Brown- 
ing's faithful  partisan,  Forster,  had  been  sorely 
tried  by  the  production  of  "Sordello."  It  is  in- 
teresting to  read  his  words  for  the  effort  he  made 
to  put  a  good  face  upon  what  in  his  inmost  heart 
he  felt  to  be  a  failure.  " '  Paracelsus,' "  he  wrote, 
"announced  a  new  and  original  poet — one  of  the 
rarest  things  met  with  in  these  days;  much  cried 
out  for,  much  sought  after,  and  when  found 
much  objected  to.  We  dare  say  'Paracelsus' 
did  not  succeed;  we  never  heard  of  a  second  edi- 
tion." Then  he  went  on  to  express  himself  in 
regard  to  the  huge  obstruction  which  the  poet 
had  raised  in  the  way  of  his  own  fame,  and  the 
oblivion  which  in  the  space  of  less  than  two  years 
had  overtaken  the  work  upon  which  he  had 
staked  his  hopes  of  renown.  "Mr.  Browning," 
he  continued,  "has  published  since  then;  in  our 
opinion  not  so  well.  But  yet  not  so  as  to  falsify 
any  anticipation  formed  of  the  character  of  his 
genius.  To  write  a  bad  poem  is  one  thing;  to 
write  a  poem  on  a  bad  system  is  another  and 


Io8  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

very  different.  When  a  greater  curiosity  about 
the  writer  shall  hereafter  disentomb  'Sordello,' 
it  will  not  be  admired  for  its  faults,  but  in  spite 
of  them  its  power  and  its  beauty  will  be  per- 
ceived. 

Forster  warmly  praised  "Pippa  Passes";  but 
his  is  the  only  unmixed  tribute  of  admiration 
which  can  be  found  in  the  leadingweekly  dispen- 
sers to  the  public  of  ready-made  literary  judg- 
ments. The  poem  must  have  been  published 
in  April,  for  The  Spectator  reviewed  it  in  the 
number  which  appeared  on  the  seventeenth  of 
that  month.  In  that  periodical  the  critic  had 
reached  the  conclusion  that  the  production,  so  far 
as  it  had  then  come  out,  was  the  first  number  of  a 
drama,  which  was  called  "Bells  and  Pomegran- 
ates." Such  was  his  solution  of  the  problem  of 
the  title.  Accordingly,  as  this  preliminary  por- 
tion exhibited  only  part  of  a  play,  allowance  must 
be  made  for  it,  as  it  w^ould  necessarily  be  the 
least  stirring  in  its  action  and  the  least  inter- 
esting in  its  passion.  "Pippa  Passes,"  there- 
fore, it  was  the  sapient  conclusion,  was  not  itself 
a  drama,  but  scenes  in  dialogue  without  cohe- 
rence and  action.  It  was  not  devoid  of  good 
thoughts  poetically  expressed,  was  the  conde- 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  109 

scending  admission,  but  these  were  perfectly 
ineffective  from  being  in  a  wrong  place.  Crude 
as  is  this  comment,  its  interest  as  a  specimen  of 
critical  imbecility  yields  to  the  superior  density  of 
apprehension  exhibited  by  the  reviewer  in  The 
Atlas}  Why  Pippa  kept  passing  puzzled  this 
literary  judge  sadly.  He  supposed  it  must  be 
for  some  sinister  purpose  to  be  revealed  later. 
Both  these  critics  assumed  the  poem  not  to  be 
an  independent  whole,  but  part  of  a  larger  work 
concealed  under  the  general  title  of  "Bells  and 
Pomegranates,"  of  the  meaning  of  which  they 
frankly  acknowledged  they  had  not  the  most  re- 
mote suspicion. 

The  Literary  Gazette^  whose  influence,  how- 
ever, was  now  dying  out,  did  not  notice  the  work 
at  all;  and  The  AthencBum  delayed  its  criticism 
till  about  the  end  of  the  year.  The  reviewer  had 
not  wasted  this  long  period  of  preparation.  He 
really  understood  and  appreciated  the  scheme 
of  the  poem  which  he  justly  characterized  as  re- 
markably beautiful.  One  gets  from  his  notice, 
indeed,  a  fairly  clear  conception  of  the  idea  run- 
ning through  it.  But  even  in  his  case  the  effect 
which   had   been   wrought  by  "Sordello"   was 

'  Number  for  May  i,  1841. 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


plainly  visible.  He  began  his  criticism  in  a 
somewhat  truculent  way,  yet  his  words  are 
worth  heeding,  not  for  their  truth,  but  for  the  ex- 
hibition they  afford  of  the  point  of  view  which 
had  begun  to  prevail  even  among  those  who  had 
at  first  been  disposed  to  regard  the  poet  favorably. 
**Mr.  Browning,"  he  wrote,  "is  one  of  those 
authors,  whom,  for  the  sake  of  an  air  of  original- 
ity and  an  apparent  disposition  to  think,  as  a 
motive  for  writing,  we  have  taken  more  than 
common  pains  to  understand,  or  than  it  may 
perhaps  turn  out  that  he  is  worth.  Our  faith 
in  him,  however,  is  not  yet  extinct — but  our  pa- 
tience IS.  More  familiarized  as  we  are,  now, 
with  his  manner — having  conquered  that  rudi- 
ment to  the  right  reading  of  his  productions — 
we  yet  find  his  texts  nearly  as  obscure  as  ever — 
getting,  nevertheless,  a  glimpse,  every  now  and 
then,  of  meanings  which  it  might  have  been  well 
worth  his  while  to  put  into  English."  ^ 

These  are  the  kind  of  notices  which  this  most 
exquisite  of  poems  received  from  the  leading  con- 
temporary arbiters  of  public  opinion.  The  es- 
timate taken  by  the  smaller  fry  of  critics  may  eas- 
ily be  guessed.     But  there  had  now  begun  to 

'Number  for  December  ii,  1841. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING 


operate  against  the  reputation  of  the  poet  some- 
thing far  worse  than  bitter  attack.  It  was  indif- 
ference. He  was  not  censured,  he  was  simply 
ignored.  Not  even  that  most  powerful  provoca- 
tive to  sale,  a  denunciation  of  the  morality  of 
"Pippa  Passes,"  had  any  perceptible  effect  in 
increasing  its  circulation.  The  scene  between 
Sebald  and  Ottima  has  always  made  a  certain 
class  of  persons  look  askance  upon  the  poem. 
At  the  time  of  its  appearance,  it  awakened  an 
occasional  protest.  The  feelings  of  some  of  the 
critics  were  indeed  profoundly  outraged.  "Nor 
does  the  moral  tone,"  said  the  reviewer  in  The 
Spectator,  "appear  to  be  the  kind  likely  to  be 
tolerated  on  the  stage  and  approved  of  anywhere. 
In  one  scene  a  young  wife  and  her  paramour  dis- 
cuss their  loves,  and  the  murder  of  the  'old  hus- 
band' needlessly,  openly,  wantonly,  tediously, 
and  without  a  touch  of  compunction,  sentiment, 
or  true  passion."  This  was  the  way  in  which 
appeared  to  this  astute  literary  guide  that  tre- 
mendous scene  in  which  sin,  suddenly  shown  its 
own  grossness,  seeks  death  as  the  only  expiation 
for  guilt.  It  may  be  worth  while,  in  consequence, 
to  record  the  prophetic  insight  of  the  same  gifted 
intellectual  luminary  who  had  discovered  that 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


"Pippa  Passes"  was  the  first  part  of  a  play. 
The  future  story,  he  told  us,  was  to  turn  upon 
the  endeavor  of  monslgnor,  the  prelate,  to  get 
his  niece,  brought  up  as  a  peasant,  inveigled  to 
Rome  as  a  prostitute,  in  order  that  he  might  get 
possession  of  her  property.  Well  was  he  entitled 
to  add  that  the  plot  was  a  novelty. 

The  recognition  which  was  given  at  the  time 
to  "Pippa  Passes"  was  not  essentially  different 
from  that  which  came  to  most  of  the  seven  other 
parts  which  made  up  the  series  of  "  Bells  and 
Pomegranates."  There  was  then,  as  always,  a 
small  band  of  devoted  admirers.  But  the  gen- 
eral public,  even  of  the  highly  educated,  was, 
and  continued  to  remain,  indifferent.  In  the 
numbers  which  followed  were  printed  six  regular 
plays — all,  indeed,  that  Browning  henceforth 
ever  wrote.  They  were  entitled  "  King  Victor 
and  King  Charles,"  published  early  in  1842; 
"The  Return  of  the  Druses,"  published  in  April, 
1843;  *'^  ^lo^  ^'  th^  'Scutcheon"  acted  and 
printed  earlier  in  the  same  year;  "Colombe's 
Birthday,"  which  appeared  in  the  spring  of  1844; 
and  finally  the  plays  of  "Luria"  and  "A  Soul's 
Tragedy,"  which  made  up  the  eighth  and  last 
number  of  the  series.     This   came  out  in   the 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING 


spring  of  1846.  Only  two  of  these  pieces  have 
ever  been  represented  on  the  regular  stage.  One 
v^as  "Colombe's  Birthday"  which  was  acted 
seven  times  at  the  Haymarket  Theater  by  Helen 
Faucit,  during  April  and  May,  1853,  and  later 
in  the  provinces.  The  other  was  *'A  Blot  i' 
the  'Scutcheon,"  the  story  of  which  demands  de- 
tailed exammation. 

A  trustworthy  account  of  the  fortunes  of  this 
play  is  all  the  more  important  because  the  gross- 
est misstatements  about  it  have  become  current. 
They  have  indeed,  become  so  current  that  there 
is  no  little  danger  of  their  permanent  embodi- 
ment in  literary  history.  The  pity  of  it  is  that 
these  misstatements  owe  their  origin  largely  to 
Browning  himself — I  need  hardly  add,  with  no 
idea  on  his  part  of  their  fictitious  nature.  The 
production  of  "A  Blot  i'  the  'Scutcheon"  was  in 
one  respect  an  event  in  his  life.  It  led  to  an 
estrangement  between  him  and  Macready.  The 
great  actor  in  consequence  had  no  share  in  the 
performance  of  this  tragedy,  though  it  was 
brought  out  at  his  theater.  The  part  he  would 
naturally  have  taken  was  assumed  by  Samuel 
Phelps.  According  to  Browning's  statement  it 
was  his  own  personal  dissatisfaction  with  the  re- 


114  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

luctance  shown  at  first  by  Macready  to  appear 
in  it  which  led  him  to  insist  upon  the  actor's 
substitute  retaining  his  place  in  the  play  instead 
of  yielding  it  to  the  manager  who  had  apparently 
repented  of  his  unwillingness. 

This  manifest  reluctance  to  bring  out  the 
play  accords  little  with  the  assertion  now  fre- 
quently made  that  Macready  was  constantly  be- 
seeching the  poet  to  write  plays  for  him  to  act. 
This  on  the  surface  is  improbable,  after  his  pre- 
vious experience  with  "Strafford."  It  certainly 
receives  no  countenance  from  anything  to  be 
found  in  the  actor's  own  diary.  Browning's 
conduct  on  this  occasion,  as  he  afterward  con- 
fessed, showed  ignorance  of  the  proper  course  to 
be  pursued.  But  as  he  himself  reports  the  cir- 
cumstances, it  evinced  something  more  than  ig- 
norance. In  the  accounts  given  neither  he  nor 
any  of  his  admirers  seem  to  be  struck  by  the  as- 
surance, to  call  it  by  the  least  offensive  name,  of 
a  dramatic  author  presuming  to  dictate  to  a 
manager,  who  chanced  also  to  be  the  leading 
English  actor  of  his  time,  who  should  take  the 
principal  part  in  a  piece  brought  out  at  the  thea- 
ter under  his  direction.  To  Macready  himself 
it  must  have  seemed  unparalleled  impudence. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  115 

But,  whatever  may  be  the  opinion  we  hold  as  to 
the  propriety  of  this  action,  there  can  be  no  dis- 
pute as  to  its  impoHcy.  To  have  a  new  play 
brought  out  at  Macready's  theater,  without  Ma- 
cready  in  it,  was  courting  failure,  no  matter 
whether  much  or  little  money  was  spent  on  the 
accompaniments  of  its  representation. 

We  are  further  to  bear  in  mind  in  discussing 
this  whole  story  that  Macready's  side  of  the  dif- 
ferences which  arose  has  never  been  given.  In 
his  diary  there  is  little  recorded  beyond  the  fact 
that  the  play  appeared.  No  comment,  what- 
ever, is  made  upon  it.  It  looks  as  if  all  reflec- 
tions in  regard  to  it  or  to  the  incidents  connected 
with  its  production  had  been  carefully  edited  out 
of  the  work  as  published.  On  the  other  hand. 
Browning's  side  has  appeared  at  least  twice  in 
what  may  be  called  an  official  form.  One  of 
these  is  in  the  shape  of  two  private  letters  written 
by  him  in  1884  to  the  editor  of  the  Lorzdon  Daily 
News.  These  were  printed  in  full  in  Mrs. 
Sutherland  Orr's  life  of  the  poet.  The  other  is 
the  "Personalia"  of  Mr.  Gosse  which  originally 
came  out  as  a  contribution  to  the  Century  Maga- 
zine for  December,  1881,  but  was  reprinted  in 
book  form  in  1890.     This,  we  are  assured,  "was 


ii6  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


inspired  and  partly  dictated,  was  revised  and  ap- 
proved of  by  (Browning)  himself."  It  was  read 
by  him  as  published  and  received  an  acknowl- 
edgment implying  its  correctness. 

These  two  sources  of  information  may  in  con- 
sequence be  properly  looked  upon  as  the  author's 
own  relation  of  certain  incidents  in  his  career. 
Both  are  therefore  to  be  treated  as  of  equal  valid- 
ity. There  are,  indeed,  between  them  one  or 
two  irreconcilable  discrepancies  in  regard  to 
particular  matters;  but  in  the  main  the  two 
authorities  agree.  In  the  "Personalia"  Brown- 
ing says  that  he  was  wont  to  be  amused  at  the 
mixture  of  fact  and  fable  given  in  what  purported 
to  be  the  story  of  his  life.  For  it  he  had  doubt- 
less ample  reason:  yet  the  most  ill-informed  of 
contemporary  biographers  never  succeeded  in 
furnishing  a  more  misleading  report  of  any  event 
in  his  career  than  he  did  himself  in  these  two 
authorized  accounts  of  one  of  his  theatrical  vent- 
ures. Southey  used  to  spend  a  great  deal  of 
his  time  in  explaining  why  his  various  epics  had 
never  had  a  sale.  The  very  obvious  reason 
seemed  never  to  occur  to  him  that  men  did  not 
care  to  read  them  and  consequently  did  not  buy 
them.     Much  after  the  same  fashion  Browning 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  117 

in  his  later  years  used  to  explain  why  his  dramas 
had  failed  upon  the  stage;  or  rather  he  used  to 
insist  that  they  had  not  failed;  that  it  was  due 
to  purely  accidental  causes  that  their  career  of 
triumph  had  been  prematurely  cut  short.  This 
was  especially  true  of  the  fortunes  of  the  tragedy 
called  "A  Blot  i'  the  'Scutcheon." 

Accordingly  let  us  contrast  some  of  the  asser- 
tions about  this  one  play  as  made  by  Browning 
himself  in  the  two  authorities  just  mentioned 
with  the  facts  as  they  really  occurred.  In  con- 
sidering them  it  is  important  to  keep  in  mind 
that  Macready  closed  his  engagement  at  the 
Haymarket  Theater  on  the  7th  of  December, 
1841.  Before  doing  so  he  had  agreed  to  under- 
take the  management  of  Drury  Lane.  This 
position  he  assumed  and  held  for  two  seasons. 
It  is  evident  from  both  the  accounts  which  come 
from  Browning  that  these  two  seasons  were  com- 
pletely confused  in  his  own  mind.  It  is  the  first  of 
^  which  he  is  thinking;  it  is  of  the  second  he  actually 
speaks.  All  this  comes  out  distinctly  the  moment 
his  assertions  are  compared  with  the  facts. 

Browing  tells  us  that  Macready  accepted  the 
play  of  "A  Blot  i'  the  'Scutcheon"  while  he  was 
engaged  at  the  Haymarket  and  retained  it  for 


Ii8  THE   EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

Drury  Lane.  It  was  toward  the  close  of  1841 
— precisely  speaking,  on  the  night  of  December 
27 — that  the  actor  opened  his  first  season  at  the 
latter  theater.  If  the  poet's  recollections  can  be 
trusted,  his  own  play  must  accordingly  have  been 
written  some  time  that  year  before  the  beginning 
of  the  first  of  these  two  seasons.  He  further 
tells  us  that  when  the  season  began  at  the  latter 
theater,  the  manager  informed  him  that  he 
should  produce  his  play  when  he  had  brought 
out  two  others — "The  Patrician's  Daughter" 
and  "Plighted  Troth."  The  former  was  the 
work  of  Westland  Marston,  the  latter  of  a  brother 
of  George  Darley.  Yet  we  know  from  Ma- 
cready's  diary  that  he  never  even  read  the  drama 
entitled  "The  Patrician's  Daughter"  until 
August  29,  1842.  He  consequently  could  not 
have  told  Browning  in  1841  that  his  own  play 
must  wait  for  one  which  the  manager  had  never 
seen,  if,  indeed,  at  that  time,  it  had  itself  an  act- 
ual being. 

Browning  tells  us  that  after  Macready  took 
Drury  Lane  under  his  management  he  opened  it 
on  December  10.  The  year  which  he  had  in 
mind  though  not  specified  could  have  been  no 
other  than  1842.     But  in  neither  of  his  two  sea- 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  119 

sons  did  the  manager  open  the  theater  on  that 
date.  As  just  mentioned,  the  first  began  on 
December  27,  1841;  as  for  the  second,  it  began 
October  i,  1842.  Browning  also  tells  us  that 
the  season  was  opened  with  Marston's  "Patri- 
cian's Daughter."  But  "The  Patrician's  Daugh- 
ter" was  brought  out  during  his  second  season, 
not  his  first.  So  far,  too,  was  he  from  beginning 
this  second  season  with  it,  that  there  had  been 
nearly  sixty  performances  before  it  came  on. 
The  date  of  December  10,  1842,  given  by  him 
for  this  particular  occurrence,  is  correct;  but  it 
is  about  the  only  correct  thing  to  be  found  in  the 
two  accounts  for  which  he  is  responsible. 

Browning  tells  us  that  "The  Patrician's 
Daughter"  was  removed  from  the  stage  to  make 
way  for  "Plighted  Troth."  The  last  repre- 
sentation of  the  former  play  was  the  20th  of 
January,  1843.  But  "Plighted  Troth"  had 
been  brought  out  during  Macready's  first  Drury 
Lane  season — precisely  speaking,  on  April  20, 
1842.  Then  it  was  most  effectually  damned. 
Though  given  out  for  the  following  night,  it 
seems  never  to  have  been  heard  of  again.  It 
hardly  needs  to  be  said  that  neither  Marston's 
play  nor  that  of  any  one  else  could  have  given 


THE   EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


way  to  one  which  had  disappeared  from  the  stage 
fully  nine  months  before. 

Browning  tells  us  that  "The  Patrician's 
Daughter"  had  but  a  moderate  success — a  suc- 
cess of  esteem,  it  is  phrased,  Macready  wrote 
to  him  that  it  had  failed  in  money-getting.  Still 
it  was  acted  at  least  ten  times  before  it  was  with- 
drawn. Here  it  is  to  be  said  that  under  Ma- 
cready's  management  an  interval  of  one  or  more 
nights — more  than  one,  as  a  rule — took  place  be- 
tween successive  performances  of  the  same  piece. 
Browning  further  gives  us  to  understand  that  his 
own  play,  in  spite  of  the  manager's  coldness, 
which  had  caused  it  to  be  maimed  and  mutilated 
and  deprived  of  every  advantage,  was  much  more 
than  a  success  of  esteem.  According  to  him,  it 
was  "a  complete  success" — as  Macready  him- 
self declared  it  to  be.  He  tells  us  that  it  was  an- 
nounced to  be  played  "three  times  a  week  until 
further  notice,"  and,  moreover,  that  it  "was  per- 
formed with  entire  success  to  crowded  houses 
until  the  final  collapse  of  Macready's  schemes 
brought  it  abruptly  to  a  close."  This,  we  are 
exultingly  assured  by  his  devotees,  is  the  true 
story  of  a  real  triumph  which  erring  critics,  one 
after  another,  have  chronicled  as  a  defeat. 


OF  ROBERT  RBOWNING  121 

To  confirm  further  this  view  Browning  tells 
us  that  the  play  had  the  usual  run.  The  facts 
are  that  it  was  brought  out  on  Saturday,  Febru- 
ary II,  and  was  further  acted  on  Wednesda}'' 
and  Friday  of  the  week  following.  Then  it  was 
withdrawn  permanently.  Accordingly  it  was 
performed  but  three  nights  in  all.  But  not  even 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  when  there  were  only 
two  theaters,  was  three  nights  the  usual  run  of  a 
successful  play.  It  was  a  distinct  mark  of  an 
unsuccessful  one.  If  the  fortunes  of  Marston's 
play,  which  held  the  stage  for  ten  nights,  could 
be  termed  no  more  than  respectable,  what  epi- 
thet ought  to  be  applied  to  those  of  the  one  which 
lasted  through  three  performances  only } 

Browning  tells  us  his  tragedy  gave  way  to  Ma- 
cready's  benefit.  That  benefit  took  place  on 
Friday,  February  24,  1843.  The  third  and 
final  performance  of  "A  Blot  i'  the  'Scutcheon," 
was  on  Friday,  February  17.  There  was  mani- 
festly no  reason  on  this  account  for  the  hurried 
withdrawal  from  the  stage  of  a  successful  piece. 
Furthermore,  during  this  interval  of  a  week,  four 
plays  had  been  performed.  These  were  "She 
Stoops  to  Conquer,"  "Macbeth,"  "The  Lady 
of  Lyons,"  and  "As  You  Like  It." 


122  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

Browning  tells  us  that  the  theater  closed  a 
fortnight  after  Macready's  benefit.  This  asser- 
tion would  have  been  absolutely  correct  if  for 
two  weeks  he  had  said  sixteen.  Macready's 
second  Drury  Lane  season  closed  on  the  14th 
of  June  with  the  performance  of  "Macbeth." 
To  make  the  discrepancy  of  the  facts  with 
Browning's  statement  of  the  facts  still  more  glar- 
ing, it  is  to  be  added  that  during  this  interval 
of  four  months  the  manager  had  tried  his  fort- 
unes with  two  new  plays.  One  of  them  was 
"The  Secretary"  of  the  veteran  dramatist,  James 
Sheridan  Knowles,  which  was  brought  out  on 
April  28;  and  the  other  the  "Athelwold"  of  Mr. 
William  Smith,  which,  printed  a  year  before, 
had  been  chosen  by  Miss  Faucit  for  her  benefit 
on  May  18.  Both  plays  were  received  with  tu- 
multuous applause  the  first  night.  Both  failed 
to  attract  audiences.  Both  were  speedily  with- 
drawn. Macready  all  this  time  was  struggling 
with  pecuniary  difficulties.  It  is  not  likely  that 
a  manager  so  beset,  whatever  might  be  his  per- 
sonal feelings,  would  risk  the  chances  with  two 
new  and  untried  plays  while  a  third  one,  with 
which  he  could  be  sure  of  attracting  large  audi- 
ences, was  suffered  to  remain  unacted. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  123 

Browning  tells  us  that  until  its  withdrawal, 
"A  Blot  i'  the  'Scutcheon"  was  performed  to 
crowded  houses.  Contemporary  evidence  is  so 
far  from  supporting  this  assertion  that  it  con- 
tradicts it  absolutely.  There  is  a  general  agree- 
ment among  the  periodicals  of  all  sorts  then  ap- 
pearing as  to  the  little  favor  with  which  the  play 
was  received.  One  quotation  may  be  given 
which  practically  represents  the  universal  opin- 
ion. This  is  from  the  review  of  the  theatrical 
season  just  ended  which  can  be  found  in  the 
London  Times  oi  June  13,  1843,  "On  the  nth 
of  February,"  it  says,  "a  three-act  play  called 
*A  Blot  i'  the  'Scutcheon'  made  its  appear- 
ance and  was  moderately  successful  the  first 
night  while  it  totally  failed  in  attraction."  This 
is  essentially  the  view  taken  by  the  other  peri- 
odicals, not  even  excluding  The  Examiner. 

But  a  feeling  seems  to  prevail  among  the  mod- 
ern partisans  of  Browning  that  anybody  who  is 
not  wholly  for  him,  not  merely  in  the  estimate  of 
his  genius  but  in  the  account  of  the  incidents  of 
his  life,  is  so  much  against  him  that  his  words  can 
not  be  trusted  at  all.  Accordingly  it  may  be  ad- 
visable to  cite  here  the  testimony  of  one  who  at 
that  period  belonged  to  the  inner  circle  of  his 


124  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

personal  friends.  This  man  is  Joel  Arnould, 
who  subsequently  went  out  to  India  to  take  the 
position  of  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  at  Bom- 
bay. He  was  equally  a  friend  of  another  one  be- 
longing to  this  same  circle,  that  Alfred  Domett 
who  was  the  subject  of  Browning's  poem  en- 
titled "Waring."  To  him  residing  then  in  New 
Zealand,  Arnould,  in  an  undated  letter,  but  mani- 
festly belonging  to  1843,  furnished  an  account  of 
the  reception  this  particular  play  had  met.  In  it 
he  followed  the  accepted  Browning  view,  now 
become  traditional,  which  represents  Macready 
as  the  devil  behind  the  scenes  who  was  mali- 
ciously bent  on  contriving  the  ruin  of  a  play  which 
thereby  would  have  the  effect  of  contributing  fur- 
ther to  his  own  financial  ruin.  "He  did  his  best 
to  wreck  it,"  says  one  of  the  poet's  biographers.^ 
Arnould  gives  a  description  of  the  first  per- 
formance which  I  select  particularly  because  it 
is  far  more  favorable  than  that  contained  in 
any  other  contemporary  record  as  yet  published. 
"The  first  night,"  he  wrote,  "was  magnificent. 
There  could  be  no  mistake  about  the  honest  en- 
thusiasm of  the  audience.  .  .  .  Altogether  the 
first  night  was  a  triumph.     The  second  night 

'  "Robert  Browning,"  by  C.  H.  Herford,  New  York,  1905,  p.  52. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  125 

was  evidently  presided  over  by  the  spirit  of  the 
manager.  I  was  one  of  about  sixty  or  seventy 
in  the  pit,  and  yet  we  seemed  crowded  when  com- 
pared to  the  desolate  emptiness  of  the  boxes. 
The  gallery  was  again  full.  The  third  night  I 
again  took  my  wife  to  the  boxes.  It  was  evident 
at  a  glance  that  it  was  to  be  the  last.  My  own 
delight  and  hers  too  in  the  play  was  increased 
at  this  third  representation  and  would  have  gone 
on  increasing  to  a  thirtieth;  but  the  miserable 
great  chilly  house  with  its  apathy  and  emptiness 
produced  in  us  both  the  painful  sensation  which 
made  her  exclaim  that  she  'could  cry  with  vexa- 
tion at  seeing  so  noble  a  play  so  basely  marred.'"^ 
Yet  this  enthusiastic  friend  who  could  have  kept 
on  going  to  the  same  performance  thirty  times 
pointed  out  that  a  new  play  produced  at  Ma- 
cready's  theater,  with  the  foremost  English  actor 
taking  no  part  in  it,  was  foredoomed  to  failure. 
That  one  fact  would  suiBce  to  repel  numbers. 
Arnould  further  conceded  that  even  had  Ma- 
cready  taken  part,  the  piece  could  never  have  be- 
come permanently  popular. 

I  have  brought  here  into  sharp  contrast  Brown- 
ing's statement  of  facts  about  the  production  of 

*  "Robert  Browning  and  Alfred  Domett,"  p.  66. 


126  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

"A  Blot  i'  the  'Scutcheon"  with  the  facts  as  they 
actually  are.  Further  minor  conflicts  with  the 
eternal  verities;  further  minor  discrepancies  be- 
tween the  two  accounts  for  which  he  is  respon- 
sible, lack  of  time  and  space  compels  me  to 
disregard.  In  one  of  the  two  authorities  here  fol- 
lowed he  is  represented  as  asserting  that  he  had 
kept  silence  for  forty  years  while  the  stories  of  the 
failure  of  his  play  were  in  circulation.  It  would 
have  been  far  better  had  he  kept  silence  the  rest 
of  his  life.  From  the  intentional  false  witness 
of  the  wicked  truth  can  be  protected.  How  can 
we  shield  it  from  the  unintentional  false  witness 
of  the  good  }  It  is  hardly  possible  to  secure  bet- 
ter evidence  than  that  which  came  from  Brown- 
ing to  establish  the  truth  of  what  is  demonstrably 
false.  For  he  himself  was  simply  incapable  of 
making  a  statement  which  he  knew  to  be  un- 
trustworthy, and  especially  one  that  would  re- 
dound unjustly  to  his  own  credit.  Yet  we  have 
had  here  to  deal  with  a  tissue  of  assertions  of  his, 
all  honestly  made  and  all  having  no  foundation  in 
fact.  Yet  because  they  have  come  from  a  man 
of  highest  character  as  well  as  of  genius,  his  par- 
tisans have  exhibited  their  loyalty  at  the  expense 
of  their  judgment  in  accepting  his  contradictions 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  127 

of  previously  accepted  beliefs  not  only  without 
question,  but  without  the  slightest  attempt  at 
verification.  It  has,  indeed,  been  more  than 
once  exultingly  proclaimed  that  these  inaccurate 
assertions  furnish  proof  positive  that  the  com- 
mon accounts  of  the  ill  success  of  his  plays,  once 
current,  have  received  their  death-blow  and  that 
all  inferences  derived  from  their  assumed  failure 
must  be  henceforth  treated  as  erroneous  and 
misleading. 

No  one,  in  truth,  who  has  had  occasion  to  refer 
to  the  history  of  this  particular  play,  seems  ca- 
pable of  making  an  accurate  statement  about  it. 
From  author  down  to  auditor  they  tell  us  the 
most  easily  exposed  untruths  with  a  full  convic- 
tion of  their  perfect  conformity  to  fact.  Let  us 
take  two  striking  illustrations  of  this  condition  of 
things.  Mrs.  Bridell-Fox,  the  daughter  of  the 
early  friend  and  patron  of  Browning,  gave  in  The 
Argosy  of  February,  1890,  an  account  of  the 
first  performance  of  "A  Blot  i'  the  'Scutcheon." 
She  gave  it,  to  use  her  own  words,  as  she  vividly 
recalled  it.  "  In  the  play,"  she  wrote,  "  Macready 
took  the  part  of  Lord  Thorold,  the  elder  brother, 
on  the  first  night  of  its  representation  only.  I 
well  remember  his  noble  bearing  and  dignified 


128  THE   EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

grace.  It  was,  however,  produced  by  him  in  the 
later  days  of  his  management  of  Drury  Lane, 
when  worn  out  with  fatigue  and  anxiety,  he  was 
unable  to  sustain  the  part,  and  handed  it  over 
to  Mr.  Phelps  for  the  remainder  of  the  nights  the 
play  ran."  Here  is  a  woman  of  unquestionable 
integrity  and  truthfulness  recalling  vividly  the 
sight  of  something  which  she  had  never  seen  at 
the  time  specified  nor  at  any  time  whatever;  for 
Macready  never  in  his  life  took  the  part  of 
Thorold  Lord  Tresham. 

Let  us  turn  to  another  creation  of  the  imagina- 
tion, though  in  this  instance  based  upon  a  foun- 
dation of  fact.  In  1844  Phelps,  who  was  the 
original  Lord  Tresham,  took  upon  himself  the 
management  of  the  Sadler's  Wells  Theater  in 
Islington.  There  he  made  a  great  success,  and 
there  he  remained  nearly  a  score  of  years.  In 
the  fifth  year  of  his  management — specifically  in 
November,  1848 — he  revived  "A  Blot  i'  the 
'Scutcheon."  His  nephew  and  biographer  gave 
to  the  Browning  Society,  in  1888,  a  glowing  ac- 
count of  the  favor  it  met  at  its  reproduction.  "  It 
was  played,"  he  wrote,  "four  nights  for  an  en- 
tire month  (the  run  he  usually  gave  a  play  pro- 
duced by  him  at  this  period)  to  large  and  en- 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  129 

thusiastic  audiences,  as  I  can  testify,  having  been 
at  the  theatre  the  greatest  part  of  each  evening."  ^ 
This,  if  true,  would  make  at  least  sixteen  per- 
formances during  the  period  immediately  fol- 
lowing the  revival.  Yet  records  which  can  not 
be  disputed  show  that  it  did  not  run  for  a 
month,  but  for  two  weeks  only;  and  that  during 
these  two  weeks  it  was  acted  not  four  times  a 
week  but  three.  Later  in  February,  1849,  it  was 
acted  twice.  This  made  eight  performances  in 
all  during  the  whole  season.^  Here  accordingly 
is  testimony  given  in  fullest  sincerity  by  a  man 
present  who  was  in  a  position  peculiarly  favora- 
ble for  ascertaining  precisely  what  had  occurred. 
Yet  to  the  truth  of  what  actually  occurred,  his 
statements  have  only  a  remote  relation.  If 
we  can  not  trust  his  testimony  as  to  the  easily 
verified  number  of  performances  given,  what 
confidence  can  we  have  in  his  testimony  as  to 
the  largeness  and  enthusiasm  of  the  audience 
assembled  I  The  further  fact  that  Phelps  did 
not  during  his  long  management  produce  again 

^  Letter  of  W.  May  Phelps,  dated  March  3,  1888.  Proceedings 
of  Browning  Society,  Notes  No.  147,  p.  243. 

^  The  play  was  acted  at  the  Sadler's  Wells  Theater,  Nov.  27, 
28,  and  29;  and  Dec.  7,  8,  9,  in  1848;  and  on  February  2  and  3, 
1849. 


130 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


the  piece,  in  which  at  its  first  representation  at 
Drury  Lane  he  was  generally  regarded  as  having 
achieved  distinct  success,  seems  to  indicate  that 
he  did  not  share  in  his  nephew's  view  as  to  the 
number  and  zeal  of  those  who  were  present  at 
this  revival. 

There  is  indeed  no  question  that  the  play, 
so  far  from  being  the  complete  success  which 
Browning  termed  it,  was  a  failure.  Such  was  the 
view  taken  of  its  fortunes  in  all  contemporary 
notices,  whether  friendly  or  hostile.  In  The 
Examiner  Forster  justly  praised  the  tragedy  as  a 
work  of  rare  beauty  and  as  unutterably  tender 
and  passionate.  Still  he  did  not  venture  to  pre- 
dict for  it  anything  but  a  short  existence  on  the 
stage.  That  it  succeeded  fairly  well  the  first 
night  may  be  freely  admitted.  But  the  same 
thing  is  to  be  said  of  many  pieces  that  then  failed 
— in  particular  of  the  very  two  already  mentioned 
which  followed  it  the  same  season  at  the  same 
theater.  If  contemporary  evidence  can  be  trust- 
ed, each  of  these  was  received  the  first  night 
with  more  enthusiasm  than  was  Browning's 
play.  Yet  each  failed  to  attract  audiences,  each 
was  speedily  withdrawn.  Their  fate  was  the 
very  one  which  befell  "A  Blot  i'  the  'Scutcheon." 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  131 

At  its  original  performance  there  was  present  a 
strong  body  of  admirers,  brought  thither  by  per- 
sonal regard  for  the  author  or  impressed  by  the 
power  and  passion  displayed  in  the  poetry.  But 
there  was  also  a  distinct  minority  of  dissen- 
tients. We  know  that  even  on  this  first  repre- 
sentation hisses  were  heard.  "The  author," 
says  the  report  in  The  Times ,  "was  called  for  at 
the  conclusion,  but  there  was  quite  enough  of 
disapprobation  expressed  to  account  for  his  un- 
willingness to  appear." 

Up  to  this  point  the  success  of  the  play  has 
been  considered.  Enough  has  been  said  to 
show  that  at  its  original  representation  "A  Blot 
i'  the  'Scutcheon"  was  a  failure.  The  further 
question  now  arises.  Ought  it  to  have  been  a 
success .?  It  must  be  kept  in  mind  that  we  are 
not  here  discussing  the  work  as  a  contribution 
to  literature,  but  as  an  attempt  at  the  dramatic 
representation  of  real  life.  We  can  concede 
willingly  the  fervor  and  fire  and  passion  which 
characterize  it  in  numerous  places  and  drew 
from  Dickens  his  enthusiastic  tribute.  We  can 
further  concede  the  opportunities  which  it  af- 
fords and  improves  for  affecting  and  tragic 
situations.     But  we  are  treating  it  here  simply 


132 


THE   EARLY   LITERARY   CAREER 


as  a  work  of  art,  as  an  exemplification  of  that 
drama,  the  aim  of  which,  as  its  greatest  exponent 
has  told  us,  is  to  hold  the  mirror  up  to  nature. 
This  involves  as  a  fundamental  consideration 
the  representation  of  hfe  as  it  is,  and  of  the  men 
living  it  conducting  themselves  in  the  way  we 
have  reason  and  right  to  expect.  The  story 
taken  as  the  groundwork  of  the  drama  may  be 
as  unreal  and  impossible  as  one  found  in  the 
Arabian  Nights.  But  that  once  accepted,  what 
is  required  is  that  the  personages  should  act  as 
they  would  were  it  probable  and  true.  But  in 
no  work  produced  by  any  great  poet  have  these 
principles  been  more  systematically  violated,  or 
rather  defied,  than  in  the  play  under  discussion. 
The  characters  are  influenced  by  motives  no  one 
could  deem  natural.  They  perform  acts  no  one 
in  his  senses  would  look  upon  as  rational. 

To  begin  at  the  beginning,  the  plot  itself  of  this 
play,  dealing,  as  it  does,  with  modern  feelings 
and  conventions,  is  something  more  than  in- 
credible. It  outrages  all  conceptions  of  the  prob- 
able, not  to  say  the  possible.  Events  that  are 
represented  as  occurring  have  undoubtedly  oc- 
curred and  perhaps  often;  but  they  have  never 
occurred  under  the  conditions  here  given.  There 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  133 

is  absolute  incongruity  between  the  characters 
of  the  persons  portrayed  and  their  acts.  This 
comes  out  clearly  the  moment  we  detach  our- 
selves from  the  play  considered  as  literature,  and 
contemplate  it  as  a  picture  of  human  life.  Take 
the  very  initial  conception.  Mildred,  Lord  Tres- 
ham's  sister,  a  young  and  beautiful  girl,  has  been 
concerned  in  a  criminal  intrigue  with  the  young 
earl  of  Merton.  They  are  intending  to  condone 
their  guilt  by  marriage.  At  the  very  outset  we 
have  two  persons  depicted  as  possessed  of  the 
loftiest  character  and  animated  by  the  noblest 
feelings,  furthermore  desperately  in  love  with 
each  other,  acting  in  a  way  that  could  never  have 
happened  in  real  life,  had  they  been  such  as  they 
are  represented  to  be.  There  has  been  and  there 
is  nothing  to  prevent  their  union.  They  both 
belong  to  the  same  station  in  life.  No  differ- 
ences exist  between  their  families.  There  is 
no  disparity  of  age.  The  alliance  is  not  only  a 
natural  one,  but  suitable  from  every  other  point 
of  view  besides  that  of  mutual  love.  There  is 
no  reason  why  the  hero  should  not  from  the  out- 
set have  wooed  the  heroine  in  the  way  of  honor- 
able marriage  as  he  is  represented  as  doing  at  the 
time  the  play  opens. 


134  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

Accordingly  it  may  be  fairly  asked,  why  should 
the  two  have  engaged  in  an  intrigue  of  this  sort  ? 
Why,  before  being  concerned  in  it,  has  not  this 
lofty-minded  lover  applied  for  the  hand  of  the 
woman  he  cherished  ?  In  real  life  this  would 
have  been  the  inevitable  course  to  follow.  In  the 
drama  only  one  reason  is  given  for  his  failure  to 
take  it.  In  his  dying  moments  the  earl  tells  the 
man  who  has  slain  him  that  it  was  fear  of  him, 
and  of  his  surpassing  reputation,  of  him  the  all- 
courted,  the  all-accomplished  scholar  and  gentle- 
man, that  has  deterred  him  from  presuming  to 
venture  upon  the  daring  step  of  asking  for  the 
hand  of  the  woman  he  loved.  Unfortunately  this 
fear  had  not  extended  to  another  member  of 
the  family  where  it  would  have  been  much  more 
in  place.  The  timidity  which  trembled  before 
man's  austerity  stood  in  no  awe  of  woman's 
purity.  What  had  kept  him  from  seeking  from 
the  brother  that  which  could  have  been  had  for 
the  asking  did  not  prevent  him  from  engaging 
and  succeeding  in  the  effort  to  overcome  the  vir- 
tue of  the  sister. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  other  party  in  the 
affair.  She  is  portrayed  as  an  embodiment  of 
purity.     Such  at  least  she  is  in  the  eyes  of  her 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  13S 

lover  and  of  her  nearest  of  kin.  She  is  filled 
with  most  agonizing  remorse  for  her  guilt.  Yet 
no  more  than  her  suitor  could  she  have  been  ig- 
norant of  the  fact  that  there  were  no  insurmount- 
able obstacles  in  the  way  of  their  union.  Cer- 
tainly the  experiment  of  asking  for  her  hand 
might  have  seemed  to  her  well  worth  trying  be- 
fore sacrificing  her  honor.  A  woman  perfectly 
pure  at  heart  can  indeed  be  made  the  victim  of 
overpowering  passion.  But  she  would  never  be 
likely  to  cast  aside  maidenly  reserve  and  virginal 
modesty  on  a  slight  pretext — least  of  all,  on  one 
so  attenuated  as  this,  that  her  lover  felt  a  certain 
timidity  about  making  an  application  for  her 
hand  in  regular  form. 

Had  the  situation  been  different;  had  there 
existed  between  the  two  a  passionate  love  to 
which  circumstances  had  opposed  an  impregna- 
ble barrier;  had  there  been  between  the  families 
a  hostility  so  bitter  that  the  obstacles  raised  by 
mutual  enmity  were  or  appeared  unsurmount- 
able;  had  their  positions  in  life  been  so  different 
that  a  proposition  of  marriage  on  the  part  of  the 
suitor  would  have  seemed  to  her  natural  guard- 
ians to  partake  of  the  nature  of  unwarrantable 
presumption  if  not  of  actual  insult:   in  such  cir- 


136  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

cumstances  there  would  have  been  palliation  for 
the  conductor  the  two  in  the  eyes  of  the  austerest, 
even  though  they  refused  to  grant  pardon.  But 
not  a  single  one  of  these  mitigating  details  ex- 
isted. The  only  defence  the  heroine  makes  for 
herself  is  conveyed  in  the  simple  phrase,  "I  had 
no  mother."  This,  as  it  appears  in  the  acting, 
is  effective  and  tragic.  But  the  point  to  be  in- 
sisted upon  in  looking  at  this  play  as  the  work  of 
a  great  dramatic  exponent  of  human  nature,  and 
not  merely  as  the  work  of  a  great  poet,  is  that  had 
the  heroine  been  really  of  the  character  ascribed 
to  her,  she  would  not  here  have  needed  a  mother. 
So  far  from  yielding  to  the  solicitations  of  her 
lover  under  the  conditions  represented  as  exist- 
ing, it  would  have  required  nothing  more  than 
ordinary  womanly  reserve  and  purity  to  repel  any 
proposition  of  the  sort  with  something  more  than 
indignation.  To  take  any  other  view  is  an  insult 
to  womanhood. 

No  argument  can  explain  away  this  violation 
of  the  truth  of  life,  no  sophistry  can  reconcile  the 
action  of  these  two  principal  personages  of  the 
drama  with  the  characters  ascribed  to  them. 
Had  the  suitor  been  the  sort  of  man  he  is  repre- 
sented to  be,  he  would  never  have  taken  advan- 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  137 

tage  of  the  innocence  and  ignorance  of  a  loving 
and  trustful  girl.  Had  in  turn  the  heroine  been 
the  sort  of  woman  she  is  represented  to  be,  the 
temptation  proffered  would  have  been  no  temp- 
tation at  all.  Accordingly  their  previous  con- 
duct, as  depicted  by  Browning  himself,  does  not 
give  the  impression  of  persons  hurried  into  the 
commission  of  sin  by  the  stress  of  circumstances 
but  rather  of  a  wanton  falling  into  it  from  the 
lack  of  principle.  At  the  very  outset  therefore 
we  are  confronted  by  the  fact  that  the  whole  ac- 
tion of  the  play  hinges  upon  a  situation  for  the 
existence  of  which  there  is  no  adequate  reason. 
As  if  this  were  not  enough,  the  behavior  of  the 
various  personages  of  the  drama  is  equally  with- 
out reason.  There  is  indeed  a  close  consistency 
between  the  unreality  of  the  plot  and  the  fatuity 
of  those  who  are  employed  to  carry  it  on.  The 
characters  act  throughout  with  a  defiance  of 
ordinary  sense  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
conceive  manifested  by  rational  beings  in  real 
Hfe. 

Let  us  take  one  of  the  early  incidents  of  the 
play.  The  lover  has  overcome  his  dread  of  Mil- 
dred's brother  sufficiently  to  venture  to  apply  for 
her  hand  in  due  form.     He  has  been  graciously. 


138  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

even  warmly,  received.  His  addresses  have  been 
sanctioned  by  the  head  of  the  house.  Nothing 
more  is  needed  save  formal  acceptance  of  them 
by  the  woman  who  has  yielded  herself  to  him 
already.  Both  therefore  are  now  fully  assured 
that  it  is  in  their  power  to  atone,  so  far  as  in 
them  lies,  for  the  past;  that  henceforth  the  earl 
can  visit  Mildred  as  her  accepted  and  ac- 
knowledged lover.  Only  two  days  must  pass — 
one  day  is  all  that  is  really  necessary — and  he 
can  then  claim  openly,  as  his  promised  bride, 
the  woman  he  loves.  Certainly  it  would  seem 
that  during  this  brief  interval  they  might  refrain 
for  the  sake  of  their  common  future  from  doing 
the  slightest  act  that  would  tend  to  bring  about 
the  revelation  of  their  secret.  The  meeting  in 
her  chamber  must  always  have  been  hazardous — 
so  hazardous  that  its  having  remained  so  long 
undiscovered  is  one  of  the  inherent  improbabili- 
ties of  the  play  which  is  lost  to  consideration  in 
the  view  of  the  many  greater  improbabilities 
which  abound  in  it.  But  now  that  perfect  safety 
is  in  sight,  there  is  surely  no  need  of  running  fur- 
ther risk,  no  justification  for  it. 

In  real  life,  refraining  from  such  further  risk 
would    unquestionably    have    been    the    course 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  139 

adopted.  In  the  play  the  thought  of  so  common- 
sense  a  procedure  seems  never  to  have  occurred 
to  either  of  the  lovers.  The  earl  takes  the  occa- 
sion of  the  night  succeeding  the  day  of  his  ac- 
ceptance by  Mildred's  brother  to  visit  Mildred 
herself  in  her  ow^n  chamber.  As  secrecy  was  all 
important,  he  would,  in  real  life,  have  made  his 
way  to  his  destined  haven  in  the  profoundest 
silence.  Instead  he  comes  singing  a  song.  The 
stage  direction  tell  us  that  it  is  to  be  sung  in  as 
low  a  voice  as  possible.  But  however  repressed 
in  the  delivery,  if  it  reached  the  ears  of  the  one  to 
whom  it  was  addressed,  it  was  necessarily  liable 
to  reach  the  ears  of  others.  Therefore,  in  real 
life  it  would  never  have  been  sung  at  all.  It  was 
poetry  that  demanded  its  utterance,  not  dra- 
matic propriety.  For  it  is  a  beautiful  lyric. 
Too  much  can  not  be  said  in  praise  of  its  pas- 
sionate intensity.  Only  it  is  not  appropriate  to 
the  occasion.  In  the  drama  which  sets  out  to 
represent  life  as  it  is,  this  was  the  time  above  all 
to  avoid  singing  it. 

Furthermore,  the  song,  while  not  appropriate 
to  the  occasion,  can  not  be  regarded  as  altogether 
appropriate  to  the  characters.  It  must  have 
grated  upon  the  feelings  of  some  of  the  audience 


I40  THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 

— as  a  matter  of  fact  we  know  that  on  the  first 
night  it  did — to  have  the  lover  about  to  make  a 
secret  midnight  visit  to  the  chamber  of  the  hero- 
ine salute  her  with  its  opening  line, 

"There's  a  woman  like  a  dewdrop,  she's  so  purer  than  the 
purest." 

Pure  at  heart  she  may  be  conceded  to  be  in  spite 
of  all  that  has  happened.  It  would  have  been 
right  for  her  lover  to  have  so  assured  her  in  the 
privacy  of  the  interview.  But  the  song  is  as 
much  addressed  to  the  audience  as  it  is  to  her  it 
celebrates.  Accordingly  the  view  expressed  in 
it  could  hardly  have  been  deemed  a  compliment 
to  the  character  of  the  women  present.  They 
might  justifiably  resent  having  it  chanted  to 
them  almost  defiantly  that  the  girl  who  is  repre- 
sented as  having  been  concerned  in  an  illicit  in- 
trigue is  actually  purer  than  the  purest  to  be 
found  among  them.  It  is  no  wonder  that  on 
the  first  night  of  its  performance  the  play  came 
near  being  wrecked  on  this  particular  scene.  In 
spite  of  the  fervor  and  beauty  of  the  lyric  there 
was  manifested  among  the  irreverent  scattered 
through  the  audience  a  perceptible  disposition  to 
scoff. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  141 

But  the  untruthfulness  of  the  play  as  a  repre- 
sentation of  real  life  does  not  stop  at  this  point. 
To  Lord  Tresham  is  revealed  the  terrible  fact 
that  night  after  night  Mildred  has  been  visited  in 
her  chamber  by  an  unknown  man.  She  is  re- 
proached for  her  course  by  her  agonized  brother. 
She  makes  no  attempt  to  deny  her  guilt,  but 
absolutely  refuses  to  disclose  the  name  of  her 
accomplice.  At  the  same  time  she  expresses  her 
^willingness  to  receive  the  Earl  as  her  affianced 
bridegroom.  Naturally  her  brother  is  horrified 
at  the  apparent  intention  to  inflict  an  atrocious 
w^rong  upon  an  unsuspecting  suitor,  to  commit 
an  act  which  would  bring  dishonor  upon  him 
who  suffered  it  and  dishonor  of  a  graver  kind 
upon  those  who  had  carried  it  into  execution. 
One  can  understand  Mildred's  refusal  to  reveal 
her  lover's  name,  if  she  had  made  up  her  mind 
to  expiate  her  sin  by  leading  henceforth  a  life 
of  solitary  contrition.  But  this  she  has  not  the 
slightest  thought  of  doing.  So  long  therefore  as 
she  purposes  to  persist  in  her  determination  to 
marry  the  man  who  has  offered  himself,  why  not 
reveal  the  actual  facts  of  the  situation  ^  Why 
not  make  it  known  that  the  applicant  for  her 
hand  and  the  nightly  visitor  to  her  chamber  are 


142  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

one  and  the  same  person  ?  It  is  not  merely  the 
natural  course  for  her  to  pursue,  in  the  circum- 
stances it  is  the  only  one;  and  she  resolutely  re- 
fuses to  pursue  it. 

Several  defences  have  been  pleaded  for  her  un- 
w^illingness  to  make  a  revelation  which  is  morally 
obligatory  if  she  intends  to  enter  into  the  pur- 
posed union.  They  have  been  put  forth  from 
the  point  of  view^  of  high  art,  and  again  from 
a  profound  philosophic  view  of  human  nature. 
The  moment  any  one  of  these  is  scrutinized,  it  is 
felt  to  be  an  effort,  futile  as  it  is  labored,  to  ex- 
plain the  unexplainable.  But  looked  at  from 
the  author's  point  of  view  there  is  no  difficulty  in 
accounting  for  her  silence.  Had  she  revealed 
the  name  of  her  lover,  the  play  would  have  had 
to  come  at  once  to  an  untimely  end,  or  would 
have  had  to  be  furnished  with  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent denouement.  The  grossest  improbabili- 
ties were  therefore  to  be  accepted  to  prevent  the 
otherwise  inevitable  result. 

Take  again  the  next  night.  Mildred  now 
knows  that  her  secret  has  been  discovered.  She 
knows  in  consequence  that  any  attempt  to  renew 
the  visit  to  her  chamber  will  be  watched  and  will 
be  watched  by  hostile  eyes.     She  not  only  rec- 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  i43 

ognizes  the  danger,  the  author  makes  us  aware 
that  she  recognizes  it.  When  Guendolen,  who 
has  surprised  her  secret,  mentions  the  renewed 
coming  of  her  lover  as  possible,  she  exclaims, 
"he  is  lost."  To  prevent  this  calamity  she 
could  certainly  have  refrained  from  any  act 
which  would  have  the  eflPect  of  luring  him  on  to 
the  destruction  which  in  that  event  she  foresees 
to  be  certain.  In  real  life  not  to  give  the  signal 
for  his  coming  would  have  been  the  least  thing 
she  could  do  in  order  to  avert  the  threatened 
peril.  But  in  the  drama  an  expedient  so  simple 
as  this  seems  not  to  have  occurred  to  her  or  to 
her  adviser.  So  at  midnight  Mildred  proceeds 
to  transfer  the  lamp  from  the  red  square  in  the 
pointed  glass  higher  up  to  the  small  dark  blue 
pane.  This  is  the  appointed  signal  for  her  lover 
to  come.  He  obeys  and  the  result  follows  which 
any  one  above  the  capacity  of  an  idiot  would 
have  foreseen  must  follow. 

Nor  do  the  other  personages  of  the  drama  dis- 
play the  qualities  which  are  supposed  to  charac- 
terize rational  human  beings.  Guendolen,  for 
instance,  is  represented  as  possessing  fully  a 
soundness  of  judgment  which  is  mainly  con- 
spicuous by  its  absence  in  the  acts  of  the  rest. 


144  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

She  discovers  by  her  own  intuitive  sagacity  that 
Mildred's  midnight  visitor  and  her  suitor  are 
one  and  the  same  person.  She  knows  that  the 
brother  has  gone  off  in  an  agony  o:^  desperation 
and  is  lost  to  direct  communication.  Still  she 
has  her  own  lover,  Austin,  at  command.  To  a 
certain  extent  therefore  she  is  mistress  of  the 
situation.  But  she  makes  not  the  slightest  effort 
to  utilize  the  advantage  of  her  position.  Now 
that  the  truth  is  known,  it  is  all-important  that 
the  earl  should  not  repeat  his  absurd  conduct  of 
the  night  before  in  visiting  Mildred's  chamber. 
What  does  she  do  to  prevent  this  visit  ?  What 
effort  does  she  put  forth  to  warn  the  lover  of  what 
she  must  have  recognized  as  his  deadly  peril  .f* 
None  at  all.  She  takes  no  steps  to  hinder  Mil- 
dred from  setting  the  signal,  she  takes  no  steps 
to  inform  the  earl  of  the  risk  he  runs  in  obeying 
it.  Her  lack  of  resource  has  its  counterpart  in 
the  conduct  of  the  head  of  the  house  in  forcing 
on  the  duel  after  he  has  learned  that  his  sister's 
suitor  is  the  real  midnight  visitor.  Though  his 
behavior  is  more  explicable,  it  is  not  flattering 
to  his  sense.  He  further  contributes  an  addi- 
tional luster  to  his  scutcheon  by  slaying  a  man 
who  makes,   as   he  recognizes  himself,  no  real 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  145 

attempt  at  defence.  This  is  the  final  irrational 
act  of  a  series  of  irrational  acts  in  which  each 
character  has  to  conduct  himself  as  unnaturally 
as  possible  to  prevent  the  play  from  ending 
naturally. 

All  this  violation  of  the  truth  of  life  was 
apparent  to  most  men  at  the  time,  though  it 
occasionally  escaped  the  attention  of  some  of 
the  most  keen-sighted.  The  necessities  of  the 
drama  at  times  exact,  or  at  any  rate  permit,  the 
neglect  of  probability  in  the  conduct  of  the  char- 
acters. Still  they  do  not  require  unhesitating 
and  persistent  defiance  of  it.  Yet  such  is  the 
course  unflinchingly  followed  in  this  play.  The 
possibility  of  the  existence  of  the  condition  of 
things  described  in  it  at  its  opening  puts  of  itself 
a  sufficiently  severe  strain  upon  belief,  or  rather 
upon  credulity,  without  the  further  persistent 
demands  made  upon  it  during  the  course  of  the 
action.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  are  in  a  world  of 
unreal  beings,  powerfully  portrayed,  it  is  true;  for 
the  situations  are  often  exciting,  and  the  pathos 
of  the  piece  is  undeniable  to  him  who  can  keep 
out  of  his  mind  the  preposterous  conduct  of  the 
characters.  But  the  action  all  through  lies  out 
of  the  realm  of  probability,  not  to  say  possibility. 


146  ROBERT    BROWNING 

It  is  therefore  out  of  the  realm  of  the  highest  art. 
So  httle  is  there  of  that  in  it  that  the  tragedy  con- 
sists largely  of  a  series  of  narrow  escapes  from 
arriving  at  a  happy  termination,  and  thereby  be- 
coming a  comedy.  From  this  fate  nothing  could 
have  saved  it,  if  a  single  one  of  the  leading 
characters  had  chosen  to  act  as  he  or  she  w^ould 
have  acted  in  real  life.  Those  who  dwell  in  the 
rarefied  air  of  the  emotional,  or  rather  the  hys- 
terical, may  find  the  behavior  of  the  personages 
of  the  play  worthy  of  approbation.  Assuredly 
cold-blooded,  hard-headed,  and  hard-hearted 
men  of  the  world  will  feel  that  people  who  display 
so  little  sense  ought  to  die,  for  they  are  not  fit 
to  live  in  any  society  made  up  of  rational  or  even 
semirational  beings. 


IV 

"BELLS  AND  POMEGRANATES'' 

"A  SOUL'S  TRAGEDY"— "LYRICS"— DECLINE  AND 
REVIVAL   OF   BROWNING'S   REPUTATION 

Whatever  may  be  the  theoretical  estimate 
privately  entertained  of  the  value  of  Browning's 
plays  in  themselves,  the  facts  given  in  the  previ- 
ous lectures  prove  beyond  dispute  that  as  con- 
tributions to  the  acting  drama  the  verdict  of  the 
public  has  never  been  in  their  favor.  Not  one 
of  them  has  ever  attained  genuine  success  on  the 
stage.  You  may,  if  you  please,  attribute  this 
inferiority  in  drawing  power  to  the  superiority 
these  pieces  display  as  literature;  though,  it  must 
be  confessed  that  this  is  something  of  a  reflection 
upon  the  continuous  attraction  for  theater-goers 
which  Shakespeare,  adequately  and  even  inad- 
equately interpreted,  has  exerted  for  more  than 
three  centuries.  Yet,  even  as  literature  most  of 
Browning's  plays  do  not  occupy  a  high  rank. 
Some  of  them  are  tender  and  delicate  as  is  "Co- 
147 


148  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

lombe's  Birthday";  some  of  them  are  tedious  as 
is  "  Strafford."  One  of  them — "The  Return  of 
the  Druses" — has  the  excitement  of  a  starthng 
denouement.  But  as  a  rule  they  interest  the 
reader  as  httle  in  the  closet  as  those  did  the  hearer 
which  were  acted  upon  the  stage. 

To  this  general  criticism  there  is  one  excep- 
tion. I  refer  to  "A  Soul's  Tragedy,"  which  with 
"  Luria"  made  up  the  eighth  and  last  number  of 
the  series  of  "Bells  and  Pomegranates."  This 
is  a  drama  which  the  poet  had  written  two  or 
three  years  before  publication,  apparently  at 
a  heat.  Browning  rivalled  and  even  occas- 
sionally  surpassed  his  most  thorough-going  parti- 
sans in  the  tendency  he  exhibited  to  prefer  his 
poorest  work  to  his  best.  For  this  particular 
play  he  naturally  therefore  had  no  great  regard — 
an  opinion  which  need  not  weigh  heavily  upon  us, 
coming  as  it  does  from  one  who  never  ceased  to 
think  highly  of  "  Sordello."  Before  showing  the 
manuscript  of  it  to  his  future  wife,  he  described 
it  to  her  as  all  sneering  and  disillusion.  He  was 
reluctant  to  print  it;  indeed,  he  was  perfectly 
ready  to  destroy  it  and  assured  her  in  the  fullest 
sincerity  that  if  she  said  the  word,  it  should  be 
burned. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  149 

In  truth,  it  gives  one  a  most  puzzling  idea  of 
Browning's  mental  processes  to  find  that  he 
thought  this  drama,  which  is  conspicuous  among 
his  works  for  its  clearness,  was  so  obscure — so 
much  more  obscure  than  "  Luria,"  for  instance — 
that  he  declared  that  if  the  latter  was  clearishy 
the  printing  of  the  former  would  be  an  unneces- 
sary troubling  of  the  waters.  He  re-read  it  in 
February,  1846.  His  previous  impressions  about 
it  were  then  fully  confirmed.  In  consequence, 
he  hesitated  about  including  it  in  the  series 
of  "Bells  and  Pomegranates."  Though  there 
were  several  points  in  it  which  struck  him  as  suc- 
cessful in  design  and  execution,  he  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  it  would  be  preferable  to  post- 
pone its  publication.  Subject-matter  and  style, 
he  thought,  were  alike  unpopular.  This  was 
true,  he  said,  even  *'for  the  literary  grex  that 
stands  aloof  from  the  purer  plebs,  and  uses  that 
privilege  to  display  and  parade  an  ignorance 
which  the  other  is  altogether  unconscious  of."^ 
He  was  therefore  disposed  to  reserve  from  publi- 
cation, for  the  time  being,  this  unlucky  play,  as 
he  called  it.     In  the  case  of  a  possible  second 

'  "Letters  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett,"  New 
York,  1899,  vol.  I,  p.  470. 


I50  THE   EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

edition  of  the  series  it  could  then  be  quietly  in- 
serted in  its  proper  place. 

Great  therefore  was  Miss  Barrett's  astonish- 
ment when  the  work  was  submitted  to  her  for 
perusal.  She  was  almost  disposed  to  be  indig- 
nant with  its  author  for  misleading  her.  "Now," 
she  wrote,  "I  shall  know  what  to  believe  when 
you  talk  of  very  bad  and  indifferent  doings  of 
yours."  ^  She  recognized  at  once  the  great  ex- 
cellence of  the  play.  The  correspondence  be- 
tween the  two  makes  it  clear  that  at  heart  she 
preferred  it  to  "  Luria,"  though  she  felt  bound  to 
defer  sufficiently  to  her  lover's  judgment  to  accord 
to  the  latter  a  nominal  superiority.  But  even  so 
much  concession  as  this  was  wrung  from  her, 
rather  than  cheerfully  granted.  "It  is  a  work," 
she  wrote,  "full  of  power  and  significance,  and 
I  am  not  at  all  sure  (not  that  it  is  wise  to  make 
comparisons,  but  that  I  want  you  to  understand 
how  I  am  impressed!) — I  am  not  at  all  sure  that 
if  I  knew  you  now  first  and  only  by  these  two 
productions — 'Luria'  and  'The  Tragedy' — I 
should  not  involuntarily  attribute  more  power^ 
and  a  higher  faculty  to  the  writer  of  the  last."  ^ 

'  "  Letters  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett,"  New 
York,  1899,  vol.  I,  p.  540. 
'  Ibid.f  vol.11,  p.  13. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  151 

In  the  conflict  that  went  on  between  the  duty 
of  heeding  her  own  judgment  and  the  desire  that 
urged  her  to  defer  to  the  taste  of  her  lover,  she 
felt  compelled  to  qualify  this  admission.  "Yet 
*Luria'  is  the  completer  work — I  know  it  very 
well,"  she  added.  Under  the  circumstances,  it 
would  be  unjust  to  reckon  up  against  her  this  in- 
dulgence in  a  mild  form  of  mendacity. 

The  more  familiar  Miss  Barrett  became  with 
the  play,  the  more  she  was  impressed  with  its 
vividness  and  vitality.  She  could  at  first  hardly 
forgive  Browning  for  terrifying  her  about  its 
poorness  and  its  obscurity.  "The  worst  thing 
is,"  she  wrote,  "that  I  half  believed  you,  and 
took  the  manuscript  to  be  something  inferior — 
for  you — and  the  advisableness  of  its  publica- 
tion a  doubtful  case."  ^  Later  she  gave  renewed 
expression  to  her  opinion.  "  It  delights  me,"  she 
wrote,  "and  must  raise  your  reputation  as  a 
poet  and  thinker — musty  '  Browning  himself 
was  perfectly  sincere  in  his  depreciatory  estimate 
of  the  work.  He  was  equally  sincere  in  the  sur- 
prise he  expressed  at  the  liking  she  manifested 
for  it.  Fortunately  this  liking  compelled  its  pub- 
lication at  the  time.     Unfortunately  it  was  not 

I  "  Letters  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett,"  New 
York,  1899,    vol.  I,  p.  541.  ^  Ibid.,  vol.  II,  p.  34. 


152  THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 

permitted  to  precede  "Luria"  in  the  number 
in  which  it  was  printed,  and  suffered  then  and 
perhaps  has  always  suffered  since  from  the  in- 
fluence of  that  somewhat  depressing  forerunner. 
As  it  further  presents  no  difficulties  of  compre- 
hension or  construction,  as  it  is  a  faithful  por- 
trayal of  human  nature,  the  poor  opinion  which 
Browning  entertained  of  it  has  extended  to  many 
of  his  devotees,  some  of  whom  seem  hardly 
aware  of  its  existence. 

"A  Soul's  Tragedy"  deserves  fully  the  praise 
which  Miss  Barrett  gave  it.  Of  all  the  dramatic 
writings  of  Browning,  it  is  the  one  that  unites 
consistency  of  plot  with  clearness  of  expression 
and  a  course  of  action  that  follows  a  line  of  nat- 
ural development  and  is,  therefore,  in  full  accord- 
ance with  the  truth  of  life.  The  characters  in  it 
are  characters  we  can  all  understand  and  appre- 
ciate. They  are  acted  upon  by  influences  we  all 
recognize  as  potent,  they  are  swept  along  by  im- 
pulses which  are  daily  affecting  the  lives  of  those 
about  us.  The  general  deterioration  in  conduct 
and  motive  of  the  hero,  which  constitutes  the 
tragedy  of  the  play,  is  the  inevitable  outcome  to 
be  expected  of  a  character  which  had  raised  be- 
fore itself  an  ideal  up  to  which  it  was  not  fitted 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  153 

to  live;  and  its  lofty  pretension  contrasted  with 
its  pitiful  performance  hardly  needs  to  be  accent- 
uated by  the  cynical  words  of  the  papal  legate, 
cool,  sarcastic,  piercing  at  a  glance  the  shallow 
nature  which  strove  to  persuade  itself  that  it  was 
animated  by  high  purposes.  From  the  very  out- 
set of  his  appearance  he  intimates  the  inevitable 
failure  and  dishonor  which  are  to  wait  upon  the 
man  who  assumes  the  attitude  of  a  lover  of  his 
country,  while  all  the  time  he  is  eaten  up  with 
love  of  himself. 

Before  taking  leave  of  the  plays,  it  may  be  well 
to  note  that  Browning,  in  no  respect  a  follower 
of  any  school,  in  many  respects  a  law  unto  him- 
self, in  his  method  of  expression  almost  defiantly 
free  from  the  trammels  of  the  conventional — that 
Browning  of  all  men  should  have  been  the  only 
great  writer  of  our  day,  at  all  events  of  our  race, 
to  deliver  himself  of  his  own  accord  into  the 
bondage  of  the  unities,  and  if  not  to  accept  fully 
that  antiquated  superstition,  to  be  profoundly 
affected  by  it.  He  did  not  observe  it  indeed  in 
his  first  play;  he  sometimes  strained  its  require- 
ments in  his  later  ones;  but  in  his  secret  soul  he 
had  a  distinct  hankering  after  it.  It  was  some- 
times impossible  to  carry  through  the  action  of 


154 


THE   EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


his  drama  within  the  limits  required  by  this  doc- 
trine. Accordingly,  he  divided  into  two  parts 
— as  in  "King  Victor  and  King  Charles"  and 
in  "A  Soul's  Tragedy" — what  is  really  one 
play.  So  an  artificial  unity  is  gained  at  the 
expense  of  a  natural  one;  for  in  each  of  these 
parts  the  action  is  limited  to  a  single  day.  But 
this  is  really  a  concession  to  an  outworn  creed 
rather  than  the  observance  of  any  principle  of 
art — for  the  plays  as  they  are,  are  organic  wholes, 
and  neither  part  has  any  justification  for  its  own 
existence  without  the  existence  of  the  other.  In 
the  case  of  "The  Return  of  the  Druses,"  "  Co- 
lombe's  Birthday,"  and  "  Luria  "  the  action  in 
each  instance  is  limited  to  one  day  and  one  place. 
In  "A  Blot  i'  the  'Scutcheon"  the  stress  of  cir- 
cumstances compels  the  extension  of  the  time 
somewhat  beyond  the  prescribed  twenty-four 
hours.  In  general,  the  difficulties  in  which  he 
involves  himself  by  encumbering  his  motions 
with  these  fetters  have  been  successfully  sur- 
mounted; though  in  certain  of  them,  anH  espec- 
ially so  in  "Luria,"  there  is  always  present  to  the 
mind  the  perpetually  recurring  flaw  in  the  ob- 
servance of  the  unities,  the  moral  impossibility 
of  the  events  taking  place  in  the  limited  time  in 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  155 

which  they  are  described  as  happening,  and  too 
often  the  physical  impossibihty.  Why  Browning 
should  have  voluntarily  entered  into  a  bondage 
which  France  had  then  flung  off,  it  is  not  easy 
to  say. 

So  much  for  the  plays.  But  in  the  series  of 
"Bells  and  Pomegranates"  were  two  parts 
which  have  done  more  to  make  Browning's 
name  a  household  word  than  perhaps  nearly  all 
his  other  poetry  combined — at  least,  not  more 
than  one  exception  can  be  found  in  his  later  pro- 
duction. These  two  were  the  sixteen  pages  of 
"Dramatic  Lyrics  "which  made  up  No.  Ill,  and 
the  twenty-four  pages  of  "  Dramatic  Romances 
and  Lyrics  "which  madeupNo.VIL  The  former 
contained  some  of  the  best-known  minor  poems. 
These  gave  at  the  time  to  those  who  were  begin- 
ning to  lose  faith  in  him  a  renewed  assurance  that 
his  poetic  power  was  of  the  highest  quality,  and 
needed  only  right  direction  to  place  him  in  the 
very  front  rank  of  authors  then  living.  Forster's 
review  in  The  Examiner  of  the  first  of  these  two 
numbers  is  so  clear  a  proof  of  the  harm  which 
had  been  wrought  to  his  reputation  by  the  work 
upon  which  he  had  prided  himself,  that  a  few 
sentences  of  it  are  worth  quoting.     "  If  poetry," 


156  THE  EARLY  LITERjiRY   CAREER 

he  wrote,  "were  exactly  the  thing  to  grind  pro- 
fessors of  metaphysics  on,  we  should  pray  to  Mr. 
Browning  for  perpetual '  Sordellos.'  As  it  is,  we 
are  humble  enough  and  modest  enough  to  be 
more  thankful  for  *  Dramatic  Lyrics/  The  col- 
lection before  us  is  welcome  for  its  own  sake,  and 
more  welcome  for  the  indication  of  the  poet's 
advance  in  a  right  direction.  Some  of  this  we 
saw  and  thanked  him  for  in  his  '  Victor  and 
Charles,'  much  more  in  his  delightful  'Pippa 
Passes,'  and  in  the  simple  and  manly  strain  of 
some  of  these  'Dramatic  Lyrics'  we  find  proof  of 
the  firmer  march  and  steadier  control.  We  were 
the  first  to  hail  his  noble  start  in  'Paracelsus'; 
the  'Strafford'  and  'Sordello'  did  not  shake 
our  faith  in  him;  and  we  shall  see  him  reach  the 
goal."  ' 

In  this  collection  appeared  that  favorite  poem 
for  children  as  well  as  for  persons  of  riper  growth, 
"The  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin."  It  had  been 
written  in  May,  1842,  for  Macready's  child.  It 
is  manifest  that  Browning  himself  either  did 
not  think  much  of  it,  or  that  he  believed  that  it 
was  not  likely  to  increase  his  reputation.  It  was 
added  at  the  last  moment  only  because  there  were 

'  Examiner,  Nov.  26,  1843. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  157 

some  columns  that  had  to  be  filled  up  for  this 
particular  number.  It  is  under  the  circum- 
stances a  singular  coincidence  that  "Lady  Gerald- 
ine's  Courtship,"  one  of  the  most  popular  pieces 
by  his  future  wife,  was  written  at  a  heat  to  meet 
corresponding  and  similar  unpoetical  conditions. 
This  same  part  also  included  several  of  his  con- 
trasted pieces  of  which  the  two  entitled  "Camp" 
and  "Cloister"  are  perhaps  the  most  famihar  to 
readers.  Here  likewise  appeared  some  perpet- 
ual favorites  as  "In  a  Gondola,"  "Waring," 
and  "Through  the  Metidja  to  Abdel  Kader." 
Indeed,  there  was  hardly  a  piece  in  it  not 
worth  reading  and  remembering. 

But  fine  as  was  this  collection,  it  was  even 
surpassed  by  the  seventh  number  of  the  series, 
which  bore  as  its  title  "  Dramatic  Romances  and 
Lyrics."  There  are  very  few  individual  books 
of  any  author  in  our  tongue  which  contain  so 
many  pieces  of  such  sustained  excellence.  By 
Browning  himself  it  was  never  surpassed  as  a 
whole.  Outside  certainly  of  the  later  collection 
entitled  "Men  and  Women,"  no  volume  of  his 
ever  appealed  to  so  wide  a  circle  of  readers  of 
different  tastes  and  temperaments.  Six  of  the 
poems  appearing  in  it  had  been  published  previ- 


158  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

ously.  Browning  for  some  reason  was  always 
averse  to  bringing  out  his  work  in  periodicals. 
Gratitude  to  Fox  had  induced  him  to  contribute 
some  of  his  early  pieces  to  the  Monthly  Reposi- 
tory. He  was  now  again  led  to  overcome  his  dis- 
like to  this  method  of  publication  because  of  the 
sympathy  he  felt  for  the  misfortunes  of  a  fellow 
craftsman.  Thomas  Hood,  already  under  the 
shadow  of  death,  had  established  at  the  begin- 
ning of  1844  a  magazine  which  bore  his  own 
name.  Before  six  months  had  gone  by,  hemor- 
rhage of  the  lungs  had  brought  him  almost  to  the 
grave.  Though  he  rallied  subsequently  to  some 
extent,  he  broke  down  completely  at  the  end  of 
the  year  and  never  left  his  bed  till  in  May,  1845, 
he  was  taken  from  it  to  his  tomb.  In  this  condi- 
tion of  things,  several  friends  of  the  dying  man 
had  come  to  his  aid.  Among  these  was  Brown- 
ing. During  the  year  preceding  Hood's  dc''<:h  he 
contributed  several  pieces  to  his  magazine.  The 
last  of  these  which  appeared  in  the  number  for 
April,  1845,  was  "The  Flight  of  the  Duchess"; 
for  with  the  death  of  the  editor,  the  following 
month,  the  poet  felt  himself  relieved  from  any 
further  obligation. 

It  was  part  only  of  "The  Flight  of  the  Duch- 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  159 

ess  "  which  was  then  printed — exactly  speaking, 
the  first  nine  stanzas  of  the  completed  poem 
which  now  includes  sixteen  in  all.  Not  till  the 
publication  of  the  "Dramatic  Romances  and 
Lyrics"  was  added  the  part  containing  the  hunt 
and  the  scene  with  the  gipsy.  Curiously  enough, 
we  know  from  Browning's  own  words  that  not  a 
line  of  this  production  as  it  first  appeared,  was 
written  as  he  originally  intended  to  write  it. 
"As  I  conceived  the  poem,"  he  said,  "it  con- 
sisted entirely  of  the  Gipsy's  description  of  the 
life  the  Lady  was  to  lead  with  her  future  Gipsy 
lover — a  real  life,  not  an  unreal  one  like  that  with 
the  Duke.  And  as  I  meant  to  write  it,  all  their 
wild  adventures  would  have  come  out  and  the 
insignificance  of  the  former  vegetation  have  been 
deducible  only — as  the  main  subject  has  become 
now."  ^  For  one  I  confess  to  being  delighted 
that  Browning  was  somehow  prevented  from 
carrying  out  his  original  intention;  that  the  de- 
scription of  the  unreal  life  with  the  Duke  has 
been  actually  portrayed,  and  has  not  to  be  de- 
duced from  something  else;  for  the  vivid  de- 
scription of  it  given  by  himself  is  worth  far  more 

'  "Letters  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett,"  New 
York,  1899,  vol.  I,  p.  139. 


i6o  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

than  all  the  deductions  that  could  have  been 
made  by  all  the  members  of  all  the  Browning 
societies  that  ever  have  existed  or  ever  W\\\  exist. 
Fev^  there  are  of  the  nineteen  pieces — or  if  the 
contrasted  poems  be  counted  separately — of  the 
twenty-four  pieces  which  constitute  this  collec- 
tion that  are  unfamiliar  not  merely  to  special 
students  of  Browning,  but  to  all  lovers  of  Eng- 
lish literature.  They  were  shown  to  Miss  Bar- 
rett in  proof.  ^  Their  beauty  and  power  sur- 
prised even  her,  disposed  as  she  was  to  admire, 
and  ready  to  find  things  admirable.  "Now," 
she  wrote,  *'if  people  do  not  cry  out  about  these 
poems,  what  are  we  to  think  of  the  world  .?" 
That  they  should  cry  out  there  was  no  question; 
that  they  would  cry  out,  there  was  every  reason 
to  expect;  that  they  did  not  cry  out,  we  know. 
There  was  even  more  than  lack  of  appreciation; 
there  was  sometimes  positive  condemnation. 
Along  with  the  censure  of  some  professional  re- 
viewers, indeed,  praise  was  bestowed  upon  them 
by  others;  but  it  was  always  praise  accom- 
panied with  qualifications.  Still  notice  of  them, 
favorable  or  unfavorable,  had  Httle  weight  with 
the  public.     Working  against   Browning's   rep- 

'  "  Letters  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett,"  New 
York,  1899,  vol.  I,  p.  252. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  i6i 

utation  was  the  indifference  which  I  have  previ- 
ously pointed  out  as  being  something  far  more 
baleful  than  hostile  criticism.  If  people  had  only 
been  willing  to  read,  they  could  not  have  failed 
to  cry  out;    but  they  simply  refused  to  read. 

It  is  in  truth  hard  for  us  now  to  comprehend 
how  low  for  a  long  time  was  the  estimate  taken  of 
Browning's  achievement;  how  small  was  the  cir- 
culation of  his  writings,  especially  in  his  own 
country;  and  how  completely  his  reputation  was 
then  overshadowed  by  that  of  his  wife.  Mrs. 
Browning  died  in  June,  1861.  She  is  now  as  un- 
duly depreciated  as  she  was  then  unduly  ex- 
alted; for  up  to  the  day  of  her  death  and  for  a 
number  of  years  after  she  stood  far  higher  in 
the  estimation  of  the  reading  public  than  did 
her  husband.  This  was  true  even  of  America, 
where  his  poetry  met  with  much  greater  favor 
than  it  did  in  his  own  land.  A  singular  and 
striking  proof  of  how  much  larger  was  the  meas- 
ure she  filled  even  here  in  the  public  eye  deserves 
mention.  Poe  was  not  only  one  of  the  acutest 
of  critics  then  living,  but  he  had  exceptional 
acquaintance  with  contemporary  literature.  In 
his  review  of  Miss  Barrett's  volumes  of  1844,  he 
accorded  to  her  superiority  over  every  poet  then 


1 62  THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 

living  with  the  single  exception  of  Tennyson. 
One,  indeed,  would  almost  infer  from  his  words 
that  of  her  future  husband  he  either  knew  noth- 
ing or  thought  little.  "That  Miss  Barrett,"  he 
wrote,  "has  done  more  in  poetry  than  any  wom- 
an living  or  dead,  will  scarcely  be  questioned; 
and  that  she  has  surpassed  all  of  her  poetical 
contemporaries  of  either  sex  (with  a  single  ex- 
ception) is  our  deliberate  opinion — not  idly  enter- 
tained, we  think,  nor  founded  on  any  visionary 
basis." 

At  the  preference  exhibited  by  readers  for  the 
poetry  of  his  wife.  Browning  did  not  grieve. 
There  were  a  few  who  then  ranked  him  much 
above  her;  but  in  that  limited  number  he  was  not 
himself  included.  He  fully  agreed  with  the  gen- 
eral public  as  to  the  superiority  ^^  her  work  to 
his  own.  Doubtless  his  intense  affection  blinded 
his  judgment;  for  there  can  be  no  question  as  to 
his  sincerity.  "The  true  creative  power  is  hers, 
not  mine,"  he  said.  In  the  abounding  love  and 
admiration  he  felt  for  her,  and  in  his  generous 
and  unselfish  devotion  to  the  extension  of  her 
name  and  fame,  he  was  perfectly  content  to  take 
a  second  place  in  the  estimation  of  the  public. 
But  what  he  resented  and  what  he  had  a  right 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  163 

to  resent  was  that  he  was  accorded  no  place  at 
all.  In  England  the  ignorance  of  his  work  and 
the  poor  opinion  there  entertained  of  it  at  that 
time  seems  now  almost  incredible.  Not  but  in 
the  worst  of  days  he  received  that  lofty  praise 
from  the  few  which  is  the  sure  forerunner  of  the 
large  praise  of  the  many.  But  among  the  many 
who  gave  him  no  recognition  were  comprised 
then  the  great  majority  of  the  most  highly  edu- 
cated class.  It  included  even  those  distinguished 
in  letters.  One  can  understand  and  forgive  the 
neglect  of  certain  of  his  productions.  But  not 
to  these  alone  did  men  at  that  time  turn  a  deaf 
ear.  They  turned  as  deaf  a  one  to  the  magnifi- 
cent pieces  which  had  already  been  brought  out 
and  to  others  to  be  brought  out  later  during  the 
period  of  his  unpopularity. 

The  proof  of  this  condition  of  things  does  not 
consist  merely  in  the  small  sale  his  works  then 
had;  though  necessarily  that  is  evidence  not  to 
be  gainsaid  or  undervalued.  Not  one  of  his  in- 
dividual volumes  ever  went  then  into  a  second 
edition.  It  is,  however,  the  incidental  remarks 
of  persons  of  high  literary  and  social  position  that 
give  us  fuller  glimpses  of  the  absolute  failure 
of  Browning's  contemporaries  to  recognize  his 


i64  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

greatness  as  a  poet.  One  or  two  pieces  of  testi- 
mony may  be  worth  citing.  Mary  Russell  Mit- 
ford  was  an  intimate  friend  of  Miss  Barrett.  In 
1846  she  wrote  to  a  correspondent  an  account  of 
her  marriage  to  Browning.  After  speaking  of 
the  genius  of  the  wife  she  went  on  to  discourse  in 
the  following  way  of  the  husband.  "He  is  a 
poet  also,"  she  said,  "but  I  believe  that  his  ac- 
quirements are  more  remarkable  than  his  poetry, 

though  that  has  been  held  to  be  of  high  prom- 

"  1 
ise. 

This  was  the  sort  of  lukewarm  appreciation 
which  Browning  received  from  even  the  most 
favorably  disposed  of  the  cultivated  class,  and 
that  too  after  the  series  of  "  Bells  and  Pomegran- 
ates" had  been  published.  Fi^rthermore,  the 
ignorance  of  him  and  the  indifference  to  him 
seem  to  have  increased  as  the  years  went  by, 
instead  of  diminishing.  The  meager  returns  of 
sale  furnished  by  his  publishers  Chapman  and 
Hall,  point  very  unmistakably  to  this  fact.  But 
we  have  even  more  direct  evidence.  In  i860 
the  noted  philanthropist,  Frances  Power  Cobbe, 
was  staying  at  Florence.  There  she  was  in  con- 
stant contact  with  the  Brownings.    While  she  felt 

*  "Life  of  Mary  Russell  Mitford,"  London  1870,  vol.  Ill,  p.  204. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  165 

the  highest  admiration  for  the  literary  achieve- 
ment of  the  wife,  we  have  her  own  testimony  that 
it  never  occurred  to  her  or  to  any  of  her  circle  of 
associates  that  the  husband  was  a  poet  worth 
considering.  In  her  autobiography  she  records 
the  obtuseness  of  herself  and  her  friends.  "At 
that  time,"  she  says,  "I  do  not  think  that  any 
one,  certainly  no  one  of  the  society  which  sur- 
rounded him,  thought  of  Mr.  Browning  as  a  great 
poet,  or  as  an  equal  one  to  his  wife,  whose  '  Au- 
rora Leigh'  was  then  a  new  book.  The  utter  un- 
selfishness and  generosity  wherewith  he  gloried 
in  his  wife's  fame  perhaps  helped  to  blind  us, 
stupid  that  we  were!  to  his  own  claims."  ^ 

We  know  now  that  Browning  felt  keenly  the 
injustice  with  which  he  was  treated.  We  learn 
much  about  his  attitude  from  his  wife's  corre- 
spondence. Her  resentment  of  the  neglect  he 
experienced  was  greater  than  his  own;  at  least 
it  has  reached  us  more  definitely.  "To  you^'* 
she  wrote  to  Browning's  sister  in  i860,  "I  may 
say,  that  the  blindness,  deafness,  and  stupidity 
of  the  English  public  to  Robert  are  amazing. 
Robert  is.  All  England  can't  prevent  his  exist- 
ence, I  suppose.     But  nobody  there,  except  a 

1  "Life  of  Frances  Power  Cobbe,"  Boston,  1890,  vol.  II,  p.  343. 


i66  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

small  knot  of  pre-Raffaelite  men,  pretends  to  do 
him  justice.  Mr.  Forster  has  done  the  best  in 
the  press.  As  a  sort  of  lion,  Robert  has  his  range 
in  society,  and,  for  the  rest,  you  should  see  Chap- 
man's returns;  while  in  America,  he's  a  power, 
a  writer,  a  poet.  He  is  read — he  lives  in  the 
hearts  of  the  people."  The  contrast  between 
the  estimate  in  which  she  and  her  husband  were 
held  in  their  own  country  and  the  feeling  enter- 
tained about  them  in  this,  she  expressed  with 
a  good  deal  of  bitterness.  "For  the  rest,"  she 
continued,  "the  English  hunt  lions  too,  but  their 
favorite  lions  are  chosen  among  'lords'  chiefly, 
or  'railroad  kings.'  'It's  worth  eating  much 
dirty    said   an  Englishman  o^  high  family  and 

character  here,  'to  get  to  Lady  's  soiree.' 

Americans  will  eat  dirt  to  get  to  us.  There's  the 
difference."  ^ 

A  year  later  Mrs.  Browning  records  an  instance 
of  the  ignorance  prevailing  about  her  husband 
and  his  work  which,  did  it  come  from  any  other 
source  than  herself,  it  would  be  hard  to  credit. 
It  occurs  in  a  letter  sent  to  her  sister-in-law  from 
Rome  in  1 86 1.     In  it  she  speaks  again  of  the  atti- 

'  "Letters of  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning,"  New  York,  1898,  vol. 
II,  p.  370. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  167 

tude  of  his  countrymen  toward  her  husband  and 
his  sense  of  its  injustice.  "His  treatment  in 
England,"  she  wrote,  "affects  him  naturally — 
and  for  my  part  I  set  it  down  as  an  infamy  of  that 
public — no  other  word.  He  says  he  has  told 
you  some  things  you  had  not  heard,  and  which, 
I  acknowledge,  I  always  try  to  prevent  him  from 
repeating  to  any  one.  I  wonder  if  he  has  told 
you  besides  (no,  I  fancy  not)  that  an  English 
lady  of  rank,  an  acquaintance  of  ours  (observe 
that!)  asked,  the  other  day,  the  American  Minis- 
ter whether  Robert  was  not  an  American.  The 
Minister  answered,  "Is  it  possible  that  you  ask 
me  this?  Why,  there  is  not  so  poor  a  village  in 
the  United  States  where  they  would  not  tell  you 
that  Robert  Browning  was  an  Englishman,  and 
that  they  were  very  sorry  that  he  was  not  an 
American.'  Very  pretty  of  the  American  Minis- 
ter— was  it  not .? — and  literally  true  besides."  ^ 

Undoubtedly  the  popularity  of  Browning  in 
this  country  was  exaggerated  by  his  wife  to  give 
point  to  the  contrast.  But  there  is  no  question 
that  the  reading  public  in  England  remained 
for  a  long  time  scandalously  indifferent  to  his 

'''Letters  of  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning,"  New  York,  1898, 
vol.  II,  p.  436. 


1 68  THE  EARLY   LITERARY  CAREER 

achievement  and  showed  but  sHght  appreciation 
of  its  greatness.  The  fact  of  the  neglect  must  be 
conceded.  Is  there  any  explanation  of  it,  any 
palliation  for  it .?  Is  there  in  particular  any 
ground  for  the  charge  of  unnecessary  and  wilful 
obscurity  of  meaning  and  harshness  of  versifica- 
tion, which  whether  really  existing  or  merely 
asserted  to  exist  militated  constantly  against  the 
acceptance  of  the  poet  as  poet  ?  Browning  him- 
self was  from  the  beginning  well  aware  of  his 
reputation  for  lack  of  clearness.  In  a  letter  sent 
in  April,  1845,  to  ^^^  future  wife  he  remarked  that 
something  he  had  written  to  her  previously  was 
"pretty  sure  to  meet  the  usual  fortune  of  my 
writings — ^you  will  ask  what  it  means."  At  times 
this  complaint  of  obscurity  afforded  him  matter 
for  jest.  He  was  fond  of  repeating  a  remark  of 
Wordsworth  about  his  marriage  to  Miss  Barrett. 
"  I  hope,"  said  the  veteran  poet,  "that  these  young 
people  will  make  themselves  intelligible  to  each 
other,  for  neither  of  them  will  ever  be  intelligible 
to  anybody  else."  The  woman  soon  to  be  his 
wife  admitted  her  own  liability  to  this  charge  of 
obscurity.  Occasionally  too  she  herself  found 
her  future  husband  unintelligible.  "People  say 
of  you  and  me,"  she  wrote  to  him  in  the  begin- 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  169 

ning  of  their  acquaintance,  "that  we  love  the 
darkness  and  use  a  Sphinxine  idiom  in  our  talk." 
She  went  on  to  make  a  personal  application  of 
this  view  to  something  which  he  had  been  writ- 
ing to  her.  "Really,"  she  said,  "you  do  talk  a 
little  like  a  Sphinx."  * 

But  Browning,  though  in  a  modified  way  he 
conceded  his  obscurity,  denied  that  it  was  inten- 
tional. Occasionally,  indeed,  he  resented  an 
accusation  of  this  sort.  "I  can  have  but  little 
doubt,"  he  remarked  in  a  private  letter  belong- 
ing to  1868,  "but  that  my  writing  has  been,  in 
the  main,  too  hard  for  many  I  should  have  been 
pleased  to  communicate  with;  but  I  never  de- 
signedly tried  to  puzzle  people,  as  some  of  my 
critics  have  supposed."  ^  Later,  in  1872,  in  the 
preface  to  the  selection  then  published  of  his 
poetical  works,  he  declared  himself  innocent  of 
"the  charge  of  being  wilfully  obscure,  uncon- 
scientiously  careless  and  perversely  harsh." 
There  is  indeed,  no  justification  for  the  belief 
that  these  faults  were  intentional;  but  though 
unintentional,  that  they  might  be  and  were  un- 

'  "Letters  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett,"  vol.  I, 

P-  53- 

^"Letters  of  Robert  Browning,"   London,  privately  printed, 
1895,  vol.  I,  p.  26. 


lyo  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

necessary,  it  never  entered  his  mind  to  conceive; 
for  while  he  did  not  purpose  to  be  obscure,  he 
felt  under  no  obhgation  to  strive  to  make  himself 
intelligible,  at  least  easily  intelligible. 

In  a  further  passage  of  the  privately  printed 
letter  just  cited.  Browning  exhibited  his  utter 
inability  to  comprehend  the  nature  of  the  prob- 
lem which  even  the  greatest  of  geniuses  must 
solve  who  desires  the  suffrages  of  the  pubhc.  "  I 
never  pretended,"  he  wrote,  "to  offer  such  litera- 
ture as  should  be  a  substitute  for  cigars  or  a  game 
of  dominoes  to  an  idle  man."  The  self-suffi- 
ciency of  this  view  is  as  astounding  as  its  futility. 
He  may  not  so  have  intended  it;  but  it  is  the 
natural,  almost  the  inevitable  inference  from  the 
words,  that  those  who  gave  him  up  because  they 
found  him  difficult  to  comprehend  must  belong 
to  the  class  who  look  upon  literature  as  merely 
the  amusement  of  an  idle  hour.  At  times,  in- 
deed, one  gets  the  impression  from  some  of  his 
utterances  that  he  was  almost  disposed  to  resent 
having  said  anything  that  could  be  understood 
at  once.  This  is  indeed  a  view  largely  taken  by 
his  disciples.  But  if  they  do  not  know  it,  Brown- 
ing himself  could  hardly  have  failed  to  see  that 
no  charges  of  such  a  nature  have  been  brought 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  171 

against  poets  as  great  as  he  and  even  greater. 
For  instance,  no  one  has  found  fault  for  a  reason 
of  this  sort  with  Chaucer  or  Milton  or  Words- 
worth, No  one  further  ever  spoke  or  thought  of 
their  poetry  as  a  substitute  for  a  cigar  or  a  game 
of  dominoes. 

The  subject  is  so  important  and  the  treatment 
of  it  has  often  been  so  confused  that  it  may  be 
well  to  have  the  nature  of  this  problem  distinctly 
presented.  Obscurity  in  an  author  arises  from 
two  causes.  It  may  be  owing  first  to  the  novelty, 
depth  or  loftiness  of  his  speculations  w^hich  either 
range  outside  of  the  common  track,  or  ascend  to 
regions  up  to  which  the  ordinary  intellect  finds 
it  difficult  to  follow.  Clearness  of  comprehen- 
sion always  assumes,  too,  a  certain  amount  of 
special  knowledge  or  a  certain  degree  of  mental 
development  on  the  part  of  the  hearer  or  reader. 
What  to  one  man  may  require  the  most  labored 
explanation  and  then  be  only  imperfectly  under- 
stood, may  convey  its  meaning  to  another  at  a 
glance.  As  the  current  of  our  life  deepens  and 
broadens,  as  it  absorbs  into  itself  new  experiences 
and  new  sensations,  as  it  gains  new  perceptions 
and  enters  into  new  states  of  mind,  things  which 
once  seemed  vague  or  incomprehensible  come  to 


172  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

Stand  out  before  us  in  distinctest  outline.  They 
do  so  because  they  express  precisely  what  we 
have  at  last  come  to  learn  or  to  feel.  Through 
mental  growth  or  perhaps  more  often  through 
sad  experience  meanings  previously  obscure  are 
clearly  revealed  to  the  inner  consciousness. 

This  is  to  say  that  we  always  have  to  be  pre- 
pared, intellectually  or  morally,  for  what  we  re- 
ceive. The  greatness  of  Shakespeare  grows  upon 
us  as  we  advance  in  years,  because  we  find  in 
him  so  much  that  in  earlier  days  we  had  passed 
over  without  regard  or  comprehension  for  the 
reason  that  it  was  beyond  the  reach  of  our  intel- 
lects or  outside  of  the  lessons  of  our  experience. 
Accordingly,  that  in  any  given  instance  we  did  not 
or  do  not  enter  into  the  full  meaning  of  his  words 
or  of  those  of  any  other  profound  writer,  is  no 
more  an  argument  against  the  art  or  genius  dis- 
played or  the  clearness  and  intelligibility  of  its 
utterance  than  the  inability  of  a  child  to  under- 
stand a  philosopher  is  proof  that  he  is  incom- 
prehensible; or  of  a  beginner  in  mathematics  to 
understand  the  integral  calculus  is  satisfactory 
evidence  that  it  is  absurd.  Either  the  intellect 
is  not  sufficiently  developed,  or  the  requisite  pre- 
liminary  knowledge   of  the   subject   treated   is 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  173 

lacking;  or  both  these  may  contribute  to  the  fail- 
ure to  perceive.  In  such  cases  the  writer  must 
not  merely  seem  obscure,  he  must  be  obscure. 
But  in  neither  case  is  it  any  fault  of  his  own. 

But  there  is  another  kind  of  obscurity  arising 
from  the  inability  or  neglect  of  the  author  to 
render  himself  intelligible.  The  thought,  as  he 
has  come  to  see  it,  may  strike  him  as  perfectly 
clear;  but  he  fails  to  fulfil  the  first  duty  of  a 
writer,  which  is  to  take  mentally  the  place  of  the 
reader  whom  he  addresses;  to  have  distinctly 
in  his  mind  how  what  has  been  uttered  will  ap- 
pear to  him  who  necessarily  lacks  the  subtle 
chain  of  association  which  in  his  own  case  has 
connected  thought  and  expression.  That  which 
has  come  uninvited  to  the  one  in  flashes  of  in- 
spiration must  be  supplied  to  the  other  by  the 
agency  of  reflection  and  study.  All  exertion  of 
this  kind  which  is  unnecessary  ought  to  be  spared 
to  the  reader.  The  author  who  is  unwillino-  to 
perform  his  duty  in  this  respect  has  no  right  to 
complain  when  those,  even  of  highest  cultiva- 
tion, refuse  to  do  for  him  the  labor  which  he 
has  no  business  to  impose.  In  a  world  full  of 
choicest  literature  that  is  comprehensible,  it  is 
inevitable  that  men  will  meet  the  difiiculty  of 


174  '^'HE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

understanding  such  a  writer  by  the  easy  device 
of  not  reading  him. 

In  Browning's  case  the  obscurity  is  due  to  the 
operation  of  both  these  agencies.  Both  have 
acted  and  will  continue  to  act  as  hindrances  to 
familiarity  with  his  writings  and  consequently  to 
the  extension  of  his  popularity.  There  is  no 
question  as  to  his  profound  intellectual  power. 
He  was,  as  Tennyson  called  him,  "the  greatest- 
brained  poet  in  England."  He  therefore  de- 
mands special  study.  He  demands  it  the  more 
because  it  is  not  depth  of  thought  which  so  pe- 
culiarly characterizes  his  utterance  as  its  many- 
sidedness  and  unexpectedness.  The  entirely 
novel  point  of  view  from  which  old  ideas  are 
presented,  the  entirely  new  light  in  which  things 
familiar  are  made  to  show  themselves,  these  con- 
stantly impress  the  mind  and  not  infrequently 
startle  it,  utterly  overthrowing,  as  they  do,  all  pre- 
conceived opinion.  Yet  the  moment  any  one  of 
these  revelations  is  brought  fully  to  our  knowl- 
edge, we  feel  something  more  than  its  justness. 
The  sense  of  its  obviousness  comes  over  us  at 
the  same  time.  Though  we  should  never  have 
dreamed  of  it  ourselves,  we  are,  none  the  less, 
surprised  that  it  has  not  occurred  to  us. 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  175 

Out  of  many  illustrations  let  us  take  for  ex- 
amples three  such  well-known  poems  as  "The 
Glove,"  and  "Clive,"  and  "Bishop  Blougram's 
Apology."  In  the  first  the  suitor  leaps  into  the 
arena  full  of  hungry  wild  beasts  and  at  the  risk 
of  his  life  picks  up  the  glove  his  mistress  has 
purposely  dropped.  He  secures  it,  returns  in 
safety,  and  flings  it  in  her  face.  We  sympathize 
at  first  with  the  act  of  the  man  in  thus  publicly 
rebuking  the  heartless  selfishness  of  the  woman 
who  exposes  her  lover  to  the  needless  risk  of 
death  for  the  sake  of  gratifying  her  vanity.  But 
how  unexpectedly  and  yet  convincingly  the  poet 
shows  the  woman's  intention  to  test  and  reveal 
the  shallowness  of  the  devotion  professed  by  the 
suitor  who  avows  his  readiness  to  run  all  con- 
ceivable risks  for  her  sake  and  then  resents  being 
called  upon  to  do  no  more  than  the  poor  captors 
of  the  beasts  are  willing  to  encounter  for  a  mere 
pittance  of  money. 

Take  again  the  duel  between  Clive  and  the 
oflScer  whose  cheating  at  cards  he  has  denounced. 
We  admire  the  courage  of  the  young  clerk  who 
looks  death  defiantly  in  the  face,  but  refuses 
to  retract  his  accusation.  To  Browning  alone 
could    have    occurred    the    recognition    of   the 


176  THE  EARLY  LITERERY   CAREER 

ground  which  the  conscience-stricken  gamester 
could  have  assumed;  and  instead  of  doing  as  he 
did,  of  what  he  could  have  said  but  did  not  say; 
but  which  if  he  had  said  would,  as  Clive  himself 
confesses,  have  left  him  no  other  alternative  than 
to  atone  for  his  accusation  by  taking  his  own  life. 
Or  consider  the  conversation  or  rather  mono- 
logue in  which  Bishop  Blougram  discusses  the 
question  of  faith  with  Gigadibs,  the  literary  man, 
who  had  publicly  doubted  the  former's  genuine 
acceptance  of  the  belief  he  avowed  and  preached. 
One  can  not  well  get  rid  of  the  feeling  that  in  this 
marvellous  piece  of  dialectics  there  is  lurking  a 
fallacy.  The  poet  himself  implies  it  in  his  final 
words.  But  to  most  of  us  it  is  a  feeling,  not 
a  conviction.  To  the  ordinary  intellect  there 
seems  no  escape  from  the  remorseless  logic  with 
which  the  great  bishop  rolls  out  his  mind  and 
overwhelms  Gigadibs.  There  are  those  indeed 
who  profess  to  have  unravelled  the  strands  of 
falsehood  which  are  interwoven  with  the  truth 
in  this  remarkable  poem;  but  they  have  done 
little  else  than  reveal  their  inability  to  answer 
difficulties  whose  existence  they  do  not  per- 
ceive. They  seem  possessed  by  the  belief  that 
denunciation  of  Blougram's  motives  and  char- 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  177 

acter  is  an    all-sufficient  answer  to  his  reason- 
ing. 

For  the  sake  of  the  numerous  surviving  mem- 
bers of  the  never-dying  family  of  Gigadibses,  I 
can  not  but  regret  that  Browning  was  not  led  to 
set  forth  in  another  poem  the  opposite  point  of 
view.  A  criticism  of  the  work  in  which  this  par- 
ticular piece  occurred  came  out  in  a  Roman 
CathoHc  review  not  long  after  its  publication. 
It  was  thought  by  the  poet  to  have  been  written 
by  Bishop  Blougram  himself,  that  is  by  Cardinal 
Wiseman.  ^  The  ascription  of  it  to  him  is  a  good 
deal  more  than  doubtful;  in  fact  it  is  highly  im- 
probable. But  while  the  Cardinal's  authorship 
of  it  would  assuredly  add  to  the  interest  taken  by 
the  reader,  it  would  add  little  to  the  interest  of 
what  was  written.  The  reviewer  termed  this 
poem  satirical  and  impertinent.  He  resented  the 
unworthy  motives  imputed  to  the  bishop  and  the 
defence  he  is  made  to  give  of  a  self-indulgence 
which  every  honorable  man  would  feel  to  be  dis- 
graceful. None  the  less  was  he  impressed  and 
even  secretly  pleased  by  the  triumphant  way  in 
which  the  prelate  is  made  to  dispose  of  his  critic. 

*  "Letters  of  Robert  Browning,"  privately  printed,  London, 
1895,  vol.  I,  p.  68. 


1 78  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

The  work  as  a  whole  led  him  indeed  to  take  a 
hopeful  view  of  the  poet's  spiritual  condition. 
His  article  concluded  with  this  specially  chari- 
table utterance:  *'If  Mr.  Browning,"  he  wrote, 
"is  a  man  of  will  and  action,  and  not  a  mere 
dreamer  and  talker,  we  should  never  feel  sur- 
prise at  his  conversion."  ^ 

But  there  is  something  else  essential  to  the 
equipment  of  the  poet  besides  greatness  of  in- 
tellect. There  is  something  else  essential  to 
poetry  besides  novelty  or  profundity  of  thought. 
Important  as  these  are,  there  are  other  charac- 
teristics just  as  important.  The  poetry  created 
to  endure  must  have  felicity  and  charm  of  ex- 
pression, independently  of  the  ideas  it  seeks  to 
convey.  Otherwise  it  has  no  superiority  to  prose. 
In  some  of  these  needed  qualities  Browning  is 
often  lacking  to  an  extent  rarely  exhibited  in  the 
case  of  any  other  writer  of  the  first  rank.  If  his 
virtues  are  extraordinary,  so  are  his  limitations. 
There  is  comparatively  little  in  him  of  that  flaw- 
lessness  of  form,  that  propriety  of  diction,  that 
use  of  words  to  clothe  the  idea  not  to  disguise  it, 
that  horizon  clear  from  haze  which  a  modern 

*  The  Rambler,  a  Catholic  Journal  and  Review,  new  series,  vol. 
V,  p.  54,  January,  1856. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  179 

poet  has  designated  as  the  distinctive  quahties 
which  have  rendered  the  hterature  of  Athens 
immortal.  With  Browning  strength  was  but 
rarely  accompanied  with  grace.  To  his  failure 
in  these  respects  was  largely  due  the  failure  of 
his  general  acceptance.  As  if  the  variety  and 
profundity  of  his  ideas  were  not  enough  to  pre- 
vent the  ordinary  reader  from  giving  them  the 
painful  attention  they  need  for  their  full  compre- 
hension, he  frequently  constructed  his  sentences 
so  as  to  render  difficult,  if  not  to  thwart  wholly, 
the  efforts  of  the  reader  to  get  any  understanding 
of  their  purport.  The  involved  constructions, 
the  dislocated  sentences,  the  abrupt  transitions, 
all  impose  a  burden  upon  him  which  makes  it 
hard  for  him  to  follow  easily  the  train  of  thought. 
Furthermore,  the  mind  is  apt  to  be  called  away 
from  the  consideration  of  the  meaning  by  hav- 
ing its  attention  distracted  by  rugged  versifica- 
tion, by  out-of-the-way  rymes,  by  peculiarities 
of  expression  that  even  in  the  more  perfect  pieces 
jar  now  and  then  upon  the  literary  sense  and  de- 
tract from  the  exquisiteness  of  the  workmanship 
displayed. 

This  formlessness,  this  ruggedness,  this  ob- 
scurity are  faults  lying  on  the  surface.     They  are 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


SO  obtrusive  that  no  one  can  miss  them,  so  re- 
pellent to  many  that  they  are  deterred  from  pur- 
suing farther  a  quest  which  opens  so  unprom- 
isingly.  For  years  these  characteristics  of  his 
poetry  worked  steadily  against  the  recognition 
of  the  poet.  They  cause  the  same  attitude  to  be 
taken  toward  him  now  save  with  those  who  have 
come  to  consider  and  celebrate  his  uncouthness 
as  art  of  the  highest  order;  for  there  is  no  limit 
to  the  intrepidity  of  a  Browning  enthusiast.  His 
thought,  always  worth  considering,  often  pro- 
found, frequently  failed  to  get  itself  clothed  in 
adequate  expression.  This  peculiarity  is  most 
noticeable  in  the  pieces  in  which  the  intellect  is 
acting  as  the  pure  intellect  and  not  under  the 
stress  of  emotion.  You  are  interested  in  the 
idea,  you  are  at  times  lured  on  by  the  quaint 
manner  in  which  the  idea  is  expressed  or  illus- 
trated. But  this  ought  not  to  be  the  aim  of  the 
poet  as  poet.  His  business  is  not  to  startle  and 
surprise,  still  less  to  puzzle  and  perplex,  but  to 
instruct  and  inspire;  and  he  will  never  do  the 
last  work  effectively,  he  will  never  be  recognized 
for  all  time  as  having  done  it  effectively  who  fails 
to  appreciate  the  fact,  and  to  act  upon  it,  that 
an  essential  characteristic  of  the  highest  poetry  is 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  i8i 

the  form  which  gives  it  distinction.  Gold  found 
in  quartz  rock  may  have  as  much  intrinsic  value 
as  when  it  has  been  smelted  and  coined;  but  it 
can  never  come  into  general  current  use. 

This  view  of  Browning  does  not  represent  the 
attitude  of  hostile  critics,  but  of  personal  friends. 
Take  the  case  of  Mrs.  Browning  herself.  In  love 
for  the  man  and  in  admiration  for  the  poet  she 
could  hold  her  own  with  the  most  ardent  of  the 
present  generation  of  his  female  disciples.  But 
neither  depth  of  affection  nor  loftiness  of  esti- 
mate deprived  her  of  her  critical  faculty.  More 
than  once  she  charged  him  with  perplexing  read- 
ers by  presuming  their  knowledge  of  what  he 
knew,  but  which  in  some  cases  they  could  not 
possibly  know,  or  in  other  cases  could  not  fairly 
be  assumed  to  know.  She  objected  also  to  the 
frequent  roughness  of  his  versification.  There 
was  in  him  a  tendency — almost  a  habit,  she  ob- 
served— to  make  his  lines  difficult  to  read.  "Not 
that  music  is  required  everywhere,"  she  wrote, 
"but  that  the  uncertainty  of  rhythm  throws  the 
reader's  mind  off  the  rail  2.nd  interrupts  his  prog- 
ress with  you  and  your  influence  with   him."  ^ 

*  "Letters  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett,"  New 
York,  1899,  vol.  I,  p.  134. 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 


A  critical  view,  essentially  of  the  same  sort,  was 
expressed  by  Landor,  one  of  the  warmest  of  his 
friends  and  one  of  the  first  to  recognize  his 
genius.  As  early  as  1836,  in  his  ''Satire  upon 
Satirists,"  he  had  hailed  Browning  as  a  poet. 
Yet  he  found  the  same  difficulty  in  his  writings 
which  has  caused  perplexity  to  the  rest  of  man- 
kind. "  I  only  wish  he  would  atticize  a  little,"  he 
wrote  early  in  the  forties.  "  Few  of  the  Atheni- 
ans have  such  a  quarry  on  their  property,  but 
they  constructed  better  roads  for  the  convey- 
ance of  the  material." 

This  tendency  to  roughness  and  awkwardness 
of  expression  seems  to  have  been  inherent  in 
Browning's  nature.  It  would  certainly  have 
been  lessened  and  might  perhaps  have  been  ex- 
tirpated by  rigid  training  in  his  early  years.  In- 
stead it  was  confirmed  by  the  desultory  education 
he  received.  As  a  result  it  became  in  time  prac- 
tically impossible  for  him  to  effect  any  genuine 
correction  of  his  own  works.  What  changes  he 
made — and  in  some  pieces  they  were  fairly  nu- 
merous— were  of  the  nature  of  slight  additions  or 
omissions,  or  of  variations,  none  of  which  con- 
tributed anything  worth  speaking  of  to  clearness 
of  comprehension.     For  the  most  part,  the  ideas 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  183 

once  put  forth,  no  matter  how  vaguely  or  crudely 
or  clumsily  expressed,  continued  to  remain  in 
the  form  in  which  they  originally  appeared. 
Jowett,  with  whom  Browning  stayed  at  the  Ox- 
ford Commemoration  in  1887,  in  commenting 
upon  him  to  a  correspondent,  pointed  out  clearly 
the  nature  and  origin  of  the  distinguishing 
peculiarities  of  his  style.  "Fie  is  a  very  ex- 
traordinary man,"  wrote  the  Master  of  Balliol, 
"very  generous  and  truthful,  and  quite  incapable 
of  correcting  his  literary  faults,  which  at  first 
sprang  from  carelessness  and  an  uncritical  habit, 
and  now  are  born  and  bred  in  him.  He  has  no 
form,  or  has  it  only  by  accident  when  the  subject 
is  limited.  His  thought  and  feeling  and  knowl- 
edge are  generally  out  of  all  proportion  to  his 
powers  of  expression."  ^ 

Along  with  this  carelessness  went  the  most 
extraordinary  self-confidence,  and,  it  is  to  be 
added,  a  self-satisfaction  which  never  hesitated 
at  self-assertion.  His  sensitiveness  to  criticism 
became  keener  as  time  went  on.  It  kept  pace 
indeed  with  the  continuing  if  not  growing  crab- 
bedness  and  roughness  of  his  later  verse.     It  al- 

'  Letter  to  Lady  Tennyson  in,  "Alfred  I^ord  Tennyson,  A 
Memoir  by  his  Son,"  New  York,  1889,  vol.  II,  p.  344. 


1 84  THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 

most  seems  at  times  as  if  this  were  resorted  to  as 
a  sort  of  proclamation  of  defiance  to  those  who 
had  found  fault  with  him  for  the  manifestation 
of  these  qualities.  He  affected,  indeed,  to  scoff 
at  his  censurers.  Had  he  been  really  indifferent, 
he  would  never  have  gone  to  the  trouble  of  pa- 
rading his  scorn.  The  resentment  he  felt  was  in- 
deed distinctly  visible  and  sometimes  lamentably 
displayed.  Tennyson,  as  we  all  know,  was  abnor- 
mally sensitive  to  criticism;  but  he  never  made 
any  such  deplorable  public  exhibition  of  the  feel- 
ing as  did  Browning  in  "Pachiarotto."  It  must 
always  remain  a  marvel  how  any  man  in  full 
possession  of  his  senses,  let  alone  a  man  of  genius, 
could  have  perpetrated  the  dreadful  doggerel  of 
that  poem,  where  the  wretchedness  of  the  reason- 
ing finds  its  fitting  counterpart  in  the  wretched- 
ness of  the  expression.  Not  much  better  is  the 
shallow  defence  he  made  for  his  method  of  writ- 
ing in  the  epilogue  to  the  volume  bearing  that 
title.  It  is  one  of  the  highest  of  tributes  to 
Browning's  essential  greatness  that  his  reputa- 
tion could  emerge  unscathed  from  those  two  dis- 
tressing struggles  to  be  jocose  and  satirical. 

Many,  perhaps  most,  of  the  things  which  stood 
in  the  way  of  his  immediate  and  general  accept- 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  185 

ance  by  his  contemporaries  were  remediable. 
Yet  he  was  almost  disposed  to  resent  the  sug- 
gestion that  he  should  take  any  steps  to  remedy 
them.  When  Tennyson  occasionally  rallied 
him  upon  the  harshness  of  his  rhythm  and  the 
length  and  obscurity  of  his  poems,  he  had  but 
one  answer.  "I  cannot  alter  myself,"  he  would 
say;  "the  people  must  take  me  as  they  find  me." 
This  is  a  perfectly  justifiable  attitude  for  him  to 
assume  who  is  totally  indifferent  to  the  opinion 
of  the  publit;  but  he  who  assumes  it  has  no  right 
to  complain  if  the  public  chooses  not  to  take  him 
at  all.  It  is  assuredly  not  the  attitude  of  him 
who  fixes  his  eye  on  either  present  or  future 
fame;  and  Browning  was  far  from  being  indif- 
ferent to  either.  So  little  indeed  was  he  regard- 
less of  contemporary  popularity  that  he  craved 
it  and  felt  the  denial  of  it  to  himself  as  a  grievance 
and  an  injustice. 

He  was  fortunate  enough,  however,  to  outlive 
this  period  of  neglect.  The  reputation  of  a  gen- 
uinely great  poet  may  be  delayed;  but  it  is  cer- 
tain to  come  at  last.  Men  could  not  remain  for- 
ever indifferent  to  the  genius  displayed  in  Brown- 
ing's work,  whatever  fault  they  might  find  with 
its  methods  of  manifestation.     As  time  went  on 


i86  THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 

he  steadily  made  his  way  into  the  appreciation  of 
a  slowly  enlarging  circle  of  admirers;  and  his 
greatness  was  conceded  even  by  those  who  cen- 
sured most  severely  his  shortcomings.  The 
welcome  which  waited  upon  the  publication  of 
"The  Ring  and  The  Book"  in  1868-69  proved 
clearly  the  increase  of  the  estimation  in  which  he 
had  come  to  be  held.  Browning  seemed  to  think 
that  the  comparative  success  of  this  work,  the 
result  of  a  slowly  but  steadily  rising  reputation, 
was  due  mainly  to  its  length.  He  said  at  the 
time  that  he  had  gained  at  last  the  ear  of  the 
public,  but  he  had  done  so  by  vigorously  assault- 
ing it,  and  telling  his  story  four  times  over.^ 
Knowledge  of  many  abstruse  things  Browning 
possessed;  but  he  never  discovered  that  men 
accepted  him  in  spite  of  his  faults  and  not  be- 
cause of  them. 

It  was  not  remarkable  success  indeed  that  he 
then  gained;  but  as  compared  with  the  neglect 
he  had  previously  endured,  it  was  distinctly 
noticeable.  The  acceptance  he  had  at  last  se- 
cured would  have  continued  to  strengthen  and 
extend  itself  of  its  own  accord;   but  owing  to  ad- 

*  "Personal  Remembrances  of  Sir  Frederick  Pollock,"  London, 
1887,  vol.  II,  p.  202.     Diary  under  date  of  April  3,  1869. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  187 

ventitious  circumstances  popularity  came  to  him, 
a  little  more  than  half-a-score  of  years  later,  with 
a  fulness  which  he  had  no  reason  to  expect  and 
which  as  a  matter  of  fact  we  know  that  he  did 
not  expect.  His  last  days  were  cheered  by  the 
ample  if  tardy  recognition  which  was  given  to  his 
genius.  I  have  said  that  from  the  beginning  he 
had  been  the  favorite  of  a  few.  He  was  now  to 
become  a  favorite  of  the  many.  The  way  had 
been  slowly  preparing  for  him  when  the  one 
agency  came  into  play  that  effectually  broke  up 
the  indifference  of  the  general  public.  This  was 
the  formation  of  the  Browning  Society  in  1881, 
established  mainly  by  the  efforts  of  the  late  Fred- 
erick James  Furnivall.  This  society  with  the 
innumerable  branches  which  sprang  from  it  all 
over  England  and  America,  worked  not  merely 
a  reform  in  the  poet's  favor,  but  a  revolution. 
It  caused  his  name  to  be  carried  far  and  wide 
as  a  household  word  to  every  place  where  litera- 
ture was  known  at  all,  and,  it  must  be  added,  to 
no  small  number  of  places  where  it  had  never 
been  known  before,  and  with  the  gradual  decay 
of  the  temporary  interest  aroused  has  never 
been  heard  of  since. 

There  are  authors  to  whom  it  would  seem  a 


THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 


questionable  compliment  to  have  societies  or- 
ganized under  their  name,  whose  duty  it  was, 
among  other  things,  to  ascertain  the  meaning  of 
what  they  had  been  saying.  Such  a  society,  in 
the  case  of  a  living  writer,  seems  to  partake  of  the 
nature  of  an  anachronism.  Its  very  existence 
tends  to  prove  in  him  who  is  made  the  subject 
of  comment  and  investigation  the  existence  of 
the  very  faults  from  the  possession  of  which  he  is 
to  be  defended.  Clearly  no  thought  of  this  na- 
ture ever  presented  itself  to  Browning's  mind. 
He  was  delighted  with  the  efforts  taken  in  his  be- 
half as  well  as  astounded  by  their  success.  "You 
very  well  know,"  he  wrote  to  Furnivall,  in  Octo- 
ber, i88i,"I  can  say  nothing  about  this  extraor- 
dinary halo  of  rainbow  hues  with  which  your 
wonder-working  hand  has  suddenly  surrounded 
my  dark  orb.  As  with  the  performances  of  the 
mosaicists  I  see  at  work  here — all  sorts  of  shining 
stones,  greater  and  smaller,  which  hardly  took 
the  eye  by  their  single  selves — suddenly  coalesce 
and  make  a  brilliant  show  when  put  ingeniously 
together — as  my  dazzled  eyes  acknowledge,  pray 
believe."  ^ 

'  Letter  of  Oct.  21,  1881,  in  "Letters  of  Robert  Browning,"  pri- 
vately printed,  1895,  vol.  I,  p.  86. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  189 

We  can  all  rejoice  that  this  late  deferred  trib- 
ute of  recognition  came  to  cheer  the  closing 
years  of  the  poet.  He  was  no  longer  obliged  to 
address  the  English  public,  as  he  did  near  the  be- 
ginning of  "The  Ring  and  The  Book,"  with  the 
words  "Ye,  who  like  me  not."  Browning  died 
rejoicing  in  the  fulness  of  his  fame.  Gratifying 
as  is  the  fact,  there  is  hardly  any  question  that 
much  of  the  sudden  and  wide-spread  popularity 
secured  by  the  agency  just  described,  was  due  to 
something  else  than  appreciation  of  his  genius 
as  a  poet.  Accordingly,  the  reputation  he  thus 
acquired  was  largely  factitious.  As  far  as  it  is 
such,  it  has  no  element  of  permanence.  It  was 
not  based  primarily  upon  regard  for  his  writings 
as  literature.  The  rapid  growth  of  the  interest 
taken  in  them,  after  once  being  set  in  motion, 
owed  its  existence  and  extension  to  the  men 
who  looked  upon  them  as  furnishing  materials 
for  investigation  and  decipherment  and  not  as  a 
source  of  delight  and  inspiration. 

For  Browning  is  supremely  the  poet  of  intel- 
lectually acute  but  unpoetical  natures.  Not  but 
there  are  men  possessed  of  exquisite  literary 
taste  with  whom  he  is  not  merely  a  favorite 
author  but  the  favorite  author.     What  I  am  try- 


IQO  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

ing  to  bring  out  is  that  a  very  large  proportion  of 
the  ablest  of  his  thorough-going  partisans  are 
much  more  remarkable  for  general  mental  activ- 
ity than  for  special  literary  sensitiveness.  The 
things  they  admire  in  him  are  not  those  which 
appeal  to  the  feelings,  but  those  which  deal  with 
the  reason.  No  one  will  deny  the  value  of  the 
poems  in  which  this  latter  characteristic  is  pre- 
dominant— sometimes  so  predominant  in  his 
case  as  practically  to  exclude  the  former.  But 
there  are  many  who  will  deny  their  supreme 
value.  Striking  thoughts  are  often  in  them 
which  impress  the  mind;  fine  passages,  some- 
times, which  linger  in  the  memory.  But  too 
generally  lacking  in  them  is  that  intense  fire, 
that  passion  which  fuses  thought  and  feeling  in- 
to felicity  of  expression  which  is  the  envy  and 
despair  of  the  imitator.  The  verse  which  exer- 
cises and  delights  the  intellect  but  fails  to  touch 
or  inspire  the  heart  may  in  many  respects  be 
worthy  of  the  greatest  admiration;  but  it  will 
never  take  rank  as  the  highest  form  of  poetry. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied,  however,  that  the  hazi- 
ness which  envelops  much  of  Browning's  utter- 
ance piques  curiosity  in  many  minds  of  a  high 
order  and  imparts  to  much  of  his  work  a  peculiar 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  191 

interest  of  its  own.  There  is,  furthermore,  a  cer- 
tain class  of  men  who  fully  believe  that  obscur- 
ity is  an  essential  element  of  profundity.  Brown- 
ing's frequent  ambiguity  and  uncertainty  of 
meaning  renders  it  possible  for  such  persons  to 
find  in  his  words  whatever  acute  intellect  or 
addled  brain  chooses  to  look  for.  They  are 
thereby  enabled  to  read  into  his  work  their  per- 
sonal conclusions  and  beliefs,  and  make  him  give 
his  sanction  to  views  of  their  own  which  they 
deem  peculiarly  profound.  The  proceedings  of 
the  various  Browning  Societies  furnish  inter- 
minable and  inconclusive  discussions  of  what  he 
might  have  meant  but  did  not  mean  inevitably. 
One  of  them,  duly  recorded,  is  worth  citing  as  an 
illustration.  A  member  of  the  original  Browning 
Society — one  conspicuous  enough  to  be  chosen 
to  preside  at  its  first  meeting — read  later  a  paper 
before  it  in  which  he  set  forth  a  certain  interpre- 
tation of  the  poem  entitled  ''Childe  Roland  to 
the  Dark  Tower  Came."  This  was  called  in 
question  by  the  founder  of  the  Society.  On  this 
very  matter  he  said  that  he  had  consulted  the 
poet  himself  who  had  three  times  uttered  an  em- 
phatic "No"  to  the  theory  which  had  just  been 
propounded.     Against  any  such  method  of  as- 


192  THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 

certaining  the  author's  sense,  the  proclaimer  of 
the  controverted  view  protested.  If  they  were  to 
adopt  the  poHcy  of  consulting  the  poet  himself 
as  to  the  meaning  he  sought  to  convey,  there 
would  be,  he  insisted,  no  need  of  any  Browning 
Society  at  all.^ 

But  efforts  to  give  clearness  of  outline  to  what 
is  doubtful  and  perplexing  neither  implies  nor 
necessitates  enjoyment  of  Browning's  poetry  as 
poetry.  Still  less  is  such  appreciation  of  it  in- 
volved in  the  many  vague  discourses  written 
about  it  or  certain  portions  of  it  by  men  who  find 
a  natural  outlet  for  thoughts  above  the  reaches 
of  their  souls  in  language  beyond  the  compre- 
hension of  the  ordinary  mind.  Not  even  is  it 
necessarily  indicated  in  much  of  the  valuable 
work  which  has  been  given  up  to  the  explanation 
of  his  words  and  phrases,  to  the  disclosure  of 
recondite  allusion,  to  the  clearing  up  of  difficul- 
ties of  construction.  Too  much  cannot  be  said 
in  praise  of  the  utility  and  importance  of  labor 
of  this  nature.  But  it  is  in  no  proper  sense  the 
study  of  literature.  It  is  the  same  sort  of  study 
as  that  which  leads  men  to  the  perusal  of  the 

*  Monthly  Abstract  of  Proceedings  of  the  Browning  Society. 
Meeting  of  May  24,  1882,  p.  26. 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  193 

works  of  Homer  and  Virgil,  not  for  the  sake  of 
their  poetry  but  for  the  light  they  throw  upon  dis- 
puted points  of  inflection  and  syntactical  con- 
struction. A  great  deal  of  the  interest  that  has 
been  manifested  in  Browning  investigation  is  far 
higher  in  degree,  indeed,  but  it  is  not  essentially 
different  in  kind  from  that  displayed  in  guessing 
the  answers  to  riddles  or  deciphering  the  enigmat- 
ical representation  of  words  in  the  figures  found 
in  rebuses;  or,  if  a  more  dignified  comparison 
be  desired,  from  that  employed  in  the  solution 
of  intricate  mathematical  problems.  All  this  is 
to  say  that  much  of  the  study  given  to  the  poet 
is  not  the  study  of  literature.  In  it  exercise  of 
the  understanding  has  been  demanded,  not  gra- 
tification of  the  taste  nor  appreciation  of  the 
work  of  the  creative  imagination. 

If  there  be  justice  in  this  view  it  follows  that 
a  good  deal  of  the  vogue  which  Browning's 
poetry  suddenly  gained  was  not  due  to  the  at- 
traction which  it  exercised  as  literature.  That 
was  a  subject  to  which  a  large  proportion  of  his 
new  admirers  were  comparatively  indifferent. 
They  were  not  specially  susceptible  to  the  charm 
of  poetry  as  poetry.  In  the  best  representatives 
of  this  class  the  intellect  had  been  developed  out 


194  THE  EARLY  LITERARY  CAREER 

of  all  proportion  to  the  taste.  Such  men  are  not 
especially  drawn  to  writers  in  whom  loftiness 
of  speculation  has  found  its  fitting  counterpart 
in  clearness  and  beauty  of  expression.  To  this 
class  belongs  the  large  number  of  active  but  un- 
formed minds.  Accordingly,  with  a  body  of 
young  and  promising  students,  it  would  as  a 
general  rule  be  much  easier  to  arouse  interest  in 
Browning  than  in  almost  any  other  great  author 
of  our  speech.  The  genuine  enjoyment  of  Mil- 
ton or  Wordsworth  or  Tennyson  presupposes, 
as  a  fundamental  condition,  the  existence  of  a 
certain  degree  of  fondness  for  literature  as  Htera- 
ture.  But  this  is  ordinarily  one  of  the  last  results 
of  cultivation.  Naturally,  for  it  such  persons 
are  in  general  unprepared.  Unquestionably, 
enjoyment  of  this  precise  sort  is  inspired  by 
Browning's  best  production.  But  he  presents 
also  a  body  of  poetry  of  which  this  cannot  be 
said.  The  study  of  it  does  not  demand  nor  does 
it  develop  literary  appreciation.  But  it  does  re- 
quire keen  intellectual  acuteness.  The  exercise 
of  the  latter  is  the  sort  of  work  in  which  young 
men  of  quick  minds  but  undeveloped  taste  can 
easily  be  made  to  take  delight.  It  is  all  the  more 
satisfactory  to  them  because  while  they  are  do- 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  195 


ing  little  more  than  unravelling  the  meaning  of 
linguistic  puzzles  or  dragging  an  idea  to  light 
from  its  misty  hiding-place,  they  honestly  be- 
lieve that  the  interest  they  take  in  what  they  are 
reading  is  due  to  their  enjoyment  of  it  as  poetry 
pure  and  simple. 

The  formation  of  the  Browning  Society  there- 
fore counteracted  to  some  extent  the  good  it  did 
to  the  extension  of  his  reputation  by  placing  an 
obstacle  in  the  way  of  its  permanence.  As  his 
poorest  work  was  generally  his  obscurest,  to  that 
much  of  the  attention  of  his  professed  disciples 
was  devoted.  It  was  largely  diverted  from  that 
portion  of  his  production  which  does  not  need 
the  exploitation  of  organized  bodies  to  discover 
and  appreciate  its  beauty  and  power.  Brown- 
ing's best  poems  occasionally  present  puzzles; 
his  poorest  frequently  present  little  else;  at  all 
events,  the  most  interesting  thing  about  them  is 
the  puzzles.  Accordingly,  these  are  the  pieces 
which  arouse  the  enthusiasm  of  certain  of  his 
partisans.  To  them  disproportionate  importance 
is  attached.  To  the  explanation  of  the  hidden 
meaning  found  in  them  painful  research  is  given 
up.  The  disciples  celebrate  the  poet  not  for 
what  is   clearly  and   vividly  expressed   but  for 


196  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

what  is  vague  and  perplexing.  Hence  mere 
Browning  societies  were  found  inadequate;  so 
Sordello  societies  were  formed  and  flourished. 
Commentaries  were  produced  which,  so  far  as  I 
can  judge  from  my  own  struggles  with  some  of 
them,  possess  a  peculiar  interest  of  their  own  in 
having  achieved  the  seemingly  impossible  task 
of  being  more  difficult  to  understand  than  the 
texts  they  set  out  to  interpret.  In  fact,  com- 
mentaries on  Browning  generally  bear  a  close 
resemblance  to  foghorns.  They  proclaim  the 
existence  of  fog;  but  they  do  not  disperse  it. 

It  need  not  be  denied,  however,  that  obscurity 
has  its  advantages  for  the  idolater,  if  not  for  the 
being  idolized.  It  constitutes  those  who  devote 
themselves  to  the  interpretation  and  exploitation 
of  the  generally  unintelligible  a  class  by  them- 
selves. Nothing  so  conducive  to  the  sense  of 
superiority  has  ever  been  devised.  The  mem- 
bers of  this  inner  circle  of  disciples  intimate 
always  and  sometimes  assert  that  it  is  only  for 
mental  and  spiritual  athletes  like  themselves  to 
grapple  with  the  problems  of  life  and  conduct 
which  Browning  sets  before  us.  Accordingly, 
they  feel  justified  in  assuming  an  air  of  compas- 
sionate condescension  to  the  grosser  denizens  of 


OF  ROBERT   BROWNING  197 

the  lower  literary  world,  the  intellectual  outcasts 
who  prize  most  in  the  poet  what  is  comparatively 
easy  to  read  and  to  understand.  They  look 
upon  themselves  as  an  elect  body.  To  them  be- 
longs a  higher  mental  development,  a  clearer 
spiritual  vision.  The  more  puzzling  the  pro- 
duction, the  keener  is  their  enjoyment  of  it,  the 
loftier  is  their  estimate  of  it.  It  is  in  works  of 
this  character  that  Brownino-  reserves  himself 
for  them.  In  these  he  does  not  lower  himself  to 
the  mean  capacities  of  the  common  mind.  To 
the  chosen  band  alone  is  it  given  to  recognize 
him  there  as  he  is,  the  seer,  the  revealer  of  the 
mysteries  of  nature  and  of  life,  the  bearer  of  a 
divine  message  to  his  generation.  It  must 
always  remain  a  matter  of  regret,  however,  that 
the  ability  given  to  these  esoteric  disciples  to 
penetrate  into  the  mystery  of  Browning's  mean- 
ing has  not  been  accompanied  with  a  corre- 
sponding ability  to  put  into  intelligible  speech 
what  they  have  brought  back  from  that  upper 
air  of  speculation  to  which  their  strong-winged 
thought  has  enabled  them  to  soar. 

If  in  these  lectures  I  may  seem  to  some  to  have 
laid  too  much  stress  upon  what  is  imperfect  and 
unsatisfactory  in  the  art  and  achievement  of  a 


198  THE  EARLY  LITERARY   CAREER 

great  poet,  it  is  because  I  sincerely  believe  that 
the  exaggerated  and  unwarranted  praise  which 
has  been  given  to  a  good  deal  of  his  work  will  set 
in  motion  a  reaction  which  in  turn  will  have  the 
tendency  to  bring  back  the  deplorable  conditions 
of  indifference  to  it  and  consequent  neglect  of  it 
that  waited  upon  it  during  a  large  share  of  his 
own  life.  A  great  author  has  a  right  to  demand 
that  he  shall  be  judged  by  his  best.  If  his  poor- 
est is  forced  upon  us  as  peculiarly  representa- 
tive by  those  who  set  themselves  up  as  his  cham- 
pions, disregard  of  the  former  is  sure  in  time  to 
follow.  As  coming  generations  recede  more  and 
more  from  Browning's  day,  they  will  tend  more 
and  more  to  revolt  from  the  doctrine  which  des- 
ignates a  portion  of  his  work  as  supremely  in- 
tellectual and  profound,  because  it  is  couched  in 
uncouth  verse  and  obscure  phraseology.  If  this 
be  made  a  point  of  belief,  the  circle  of  his  readers 
will  be  steadily  narrowed.  The  general  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  greatness  of  his  genius  will  never 
be  threatened  by  the  attacks  of  hostile  critics; 
but  it  stands  in  some  danger  from  the  constant 
exaltation  of  his  least  satisfactory  work  by  the 
most  vociferous  of  his  extreme  partisans.  The 
contemporary    indifference  manifested   toward 


OF  ROBERT  BROWNING  199 

him  was  largely  his  own  fault;  if  in  time  coming 
there  be  return  of  this  indifference,  for  it  the  un- 
wisdom of  his  advocates  will  be  mainly  respon- 
sible. 

For,  as  I  look  at  it,  so  all-important  in  poetry 
is  the  expression  of  the  thought,  that  when  the 
thought  is  great  but  the  expression  unsatisfac- 
tory, that  very  fact  removes  it  out  of  the  realm 
of  the  highest  literary  achievement.  Accordingly, 
I  venture  to  take  the  ground  that  in  the  future  a 
great  mass  of  Browning's  verse  will  have  but  a 
very  limited  body  of  readers  and  a  still  more 
Hmited  body  of  admirers.  It  is  because  I  do  not 
believe  that  there  is  any  lasting  pleasure  in 
formlessness,  any  genuine  vitality  in  inarticulate 
phraseology,  that  I  express  here  a  view  w^hich  is 
opposed  to  that  which  has  of  late  had  wide  ac- 
ceptance. Poems  of  his  there  are  which  will 
never  cease  to  be  cherished  so  long  as  English 
literature  endures.  Still  with  his  works  as  with 
those  of  ether  writers  nature  in  the  end  will  as- 
sert her  rights.  The  verse  of  his  which  will  last 
longest,  which  will  reach  the  widest  circle,  which 
will  meet  everywhere  with  the  keenest  apprecia- 
tion will  be,  as  it  has  been,  that  which  offers 
fewest  difficulties  either  in  the  way  of  compre- 


ROBERT  BROWNING 


henslon  or  of  diction.  The  poems  of  Browning 
that  will  carry  his  name  down  to  remotest  poster- 
ity will  be  those  that  are  the  least  representative 
of  him  in  the  eyes  of  no  small  number  of  his  pres- 
ent admirers. 


INDEX 

Adams,  Sarah  Flower,  8. 

Argosy,  The,  127. 

Arnould,  Joel,  124. 

AthencBum,  The,  13,  32,  33,  83,  97,  109. 

Atlas,  The,  12,  13,  32,  33,  82,  93,  109. 

Barrett,  Elizabeth  Barrett  (see  Elizabeth  Barrett  Brown- 
ing). 
Barrett,  Lawrence,  61. 
bombast,  25. 
Bridell-Fox,  Mrs.,  127. 
Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  14,  17,  49,  69,  80,  88,  97, 

98,  99,  148-152,  157,  160,  161,  164,  167,  168,  181. 
Browning,  Robert,  birth  of,  3;  education  of,  19;  formless- 
ness and  ruggedness  of  expression  of,  178-183;  obscur- 
ity of,  5,  20,  62,  75-84,  168-174;  observance  of  the 
Unities  of,  loi,  153-155;  popularity  of,  in  America,  93, 
166,  167;  position  of,  as  a  dramatist,  24,  60-72,  loi; 
prose  of,  105;  unpopularity  of,  in  England,  163-167; 
writings  of : 
Bells  and  Pomegranates,  96-101,  109,  112,  148,  149, 

iS5»  164. 
Bishop  Blougram's  Apology,  175-178. 
Bloti'the'Scutcheon,A,  45,  61,70, 112,  154;  charac- 
ter of,  as  a  drama,  1 31-146;  stage  history  of,  113- 
131- 
Camp  and  Cloister,  157. 
Childe  Roland  to  the  Dark  Tower  Came,  191. 
Clive,  175. 


202  INDEX 

Colombe's  Birthday,  6i,  112,  113,  148,  154. 

Dramatic  Lyrics,  155,  156. 

Dramatic  Romances  and  Lyrics,  155,  157,  159-161. 

Flight  of  the  Duchess,  The,  158-160. 

Glove,  The,  175. 

In  a  Balcony,  59. 

In  a  Gondola,  157. 

Incondita,  9. 

King  Victor  and  King  Charles,  154,  156. 

Luria,  68-72,  112,  148,  149,  150,  151,  152,  154. 

Men  and  Women,  157. 

Pachiarotto,  184. 

Paracelsus,  appearance  and  reception  of,  22-44,  47, 

55.  56,  57.  73.  74,  75.  77,  82,  loi,  107,  156. 
Pauline,  appearance  and  reception  of,  7-19,  28,  29. 
Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin,  The,  156. 
Pippa  Passes,  appearance  and  reception  of,  59,  loi- 

112,  156. 
Return  of  the  Druses,  The,  112,  148,  154. 
Ring  and  the  Book,  The,  186,  189. 
Sordello,  appearance  and  reception  of,  73-93,  95, 106, 

107,  108,  109,  148,  156. 
Soul's  Tragedy,  A,  105,  112,  148-153,  154- 
Strafford,  reception  of  play  of,  46-59,  64,  72,  73,  74, 

82,  114,   148,  156;   Browning,  joint  author  with 

Forster  of  biography  of,  47-49- 
Through  the  Metidja  to  Abdel  Kader,  157. 
Waring,  124,  157. 
Browning  Society  and  Societies,  the,  16,  48,  128,  160, 

187-192,  195. 
Byron,  Lord,  4. 

Carlyle,  Jean  Welsh,  76,  86. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  76. 
Century  Magazine,  The,  115. 


INDEX  203 

Chapman,  George,  76,  81. 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  171. 
Cobbe,  Frances  Power,  164. 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  38. 

Dante,  74. 

Barley's  "Plighted  Troth,"  118,  119. 

Dickens,  Charles,  131. 

Domett,  Alfred,  124. 

Donne,  John,  21. 

Drury  Lane  Theater,  117-119,  128. 

Edinburgh  Review,  The,  57. 

Eliot,  Sir  John,  47. 

Examiner,  The,  12, 31, 32,  35,  36,  37,  52,  53,  83,  107,  123, 

130,  155- 

Faucit,  Helen  (Lady  Martin),  51,  52,  58,  113,  122. 

Flower,  Eliza,  8,  9. 

Fonblanque,  Albany,  12. 

Forster,  John,  12,  31,  34,  35,  36-38,  42,  46,  47,  48,  52,  SZ, 

54,  83,  107,  130,  155,  166. 
Fox,  William  Johnson,  8,  9,  10,  11,  12,  34,  38,  45,  158. 
Eraser's  Magazine,  15,  42. 
Furnivall,  Frederick  James,  187,  188,  191. 
fustian,  25. 

Gosse,  Edmund,  35,  115. 

Haymarket  Theater,  117. 

Herford,  Charles  Harold,  124. 

Hood,  Thomas,  158. 

Horace,  102. 

Home,  Richard  Hengist,  42,  43. 

Hunt,  John  Henry  Leigh,  12,  39,  55. 


204  INDEX     

Jerrold,  Douglas,  76,  78. 
Jowett,  Benjamin,  183. 

Kenyon,  John,  97,  98. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  78. 
Knowles,  James  Sheridan,  122,  130. 

Lander,  Walter  Savage,  182. 
Literary  Gazette,  The,  12,  14,  34,  83,  109. 
London  Daily  News,  The  115. 
London  Times,  The,  123,  131. 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  79. 

Macready,  William  Charles,  31,  45,  46,  49-54,  57»  5^,  7°, 

113-115,  117-125,  127,  156. 
Marston,  Westland,  118,  119,  120,  121. 
Martineau,  Harriet,  73,  77. 
Metropolitan  Magazine,  The,  34. 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  14. 
Milton,  John,  29,  85,  171,  194- 
Mitford,  Mary  Russell,  164. 
Monthly  Repository,  The,  8,  11,  35,  38,  158. 
Moxon,  Edward,  23,  96. 

New  Monthly  Magazine,  The,  30,  38,  42. 
North  American  Review,  The,  79. 

Orr,  Mrs.  Sutherland,  35,  115. 

Phelps,  Samuel,  113,  128-130. 
Phelps,  W.  May,  129. 
Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  161. 
Pollock,  Sir  Frederick,  186. 

Rambler,  The,  178. 
Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  18. 


INDEX  205 

Sadler's  Wells  Theater,  128-130. 

Scott,  William  Bell,  55. 

Shakespeare,  William,  50,  60,  68-71,  147,  172. 

Sharp,  William,  36,  76,  77. 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  5,  38,  87. 

Smith,  William,  122,  130. 

Southey,  Robert,  116. 

Spectator,  The,  12,  32,  33,  81,  108,  iii. 

Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  76,  77,  81. 

TaWs  Edinburgh  Magazine,  14. 
Talfourd,  Sir  Thomas  Noon,  31. 
Taylor,  Sir  Henry,  29,  36,  42,  44. 

Tennyson,  Alfred  Lord,  4,  11,  23,  57,  76,  79,  162,  174, 
184,  185,  194. 

Vandenhoff,  John,  53. 

Westminster  Review,  The,  11. 

Wilson,  Effingham,  23. 

Wiseman,  Nicholas  Patrick  Stephen,  177. 

Wordsworth,  William,  38,  79,  168,  171,  194. 


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